“Might mollify” and “soft opponents” suggest how weak his explanations so far have been. Unless I missed something, Rubio hasn’t renounced any of the goals of the Gang of Eight bill; he’s merely said it wasn’t the right time. A lot of conservatives want to forgive him his trespasses, but he needs to offer a genuine, substantive mea culpa.

He could achieve this with three steps: 1) Explicitly, without weasely politician-talk, pledge that no legalization will be even debated until certain enforcement benchmarks have been met, like fully operational E-Verify and visa-tracking systems, plus two independent, outside estimates showing three consecutive years of decline in the illegal population. 2) Acknowledge that he agrees with Jeff Sessions that current immigration levels are too high, which he can square with his call for more merit-based selection criteria by cutting the chain-migration and lottery categories by 250,000, but increasing skilled immigration by 50,000. And 3) say that he still thinks an expanded temporary worker program is a good idea, but any program would have to be based on principles like those outlined by Ed Meese during the Bush amnesty fight, to prevent the program from leading to permanent settlement or illegal immigration.

None of these is fully unsatisfactory from my perspective, but would represent a real concession to Republican voters while not alienating the donors too much.