The Weekly Standard editor told Ingraham that Rubio — who Kristol said he considers “a friend” — should step away from the “big government bill.” Instead, immigration reform should be dealt with issue-by-issue rather than by one comprehensive piece of “bad legislation,” Kristol said.

“Think of the trust you have to have in bureaucracy to make all this work,” he said. “There’ll be certifications and border security, there’ll be tests of whether people paid back taxes. … If you like Obamacare, you should like this immigration bill. And I honestly think conservatives should oppose it on those grounds alone.”

Kristol said Republicans and the Florida senator should wait on tackling immigration until conditions are more favorable for the party — for example, in 2015, when he said there will be more Republicans in Congress or in 2017, when “perhaps there’s a Republican president.”