Even more than the flip-flops for which he was constantly attacked by the other candidates, even more than the hideous unpopularity of some parts of the immigration policy he supported, the Gang of Eight bill undermined Rubio’s argument about the lives of the struggling. In his justly praised speech on poverty, Rubio described a working class that was struggling to make ends meet, struggling to keep families together, and often struggling to stay in the labor force. But, even as he was proposing wage subsidies and relocation vouchers to help low earners, Rubio was proposing using the immigration system to increase the ranks of the low-skilled and low-earning. It was an absurdity.

The self-contradictory nature of Rubio’s politics can be summed up in two sets of quotes. In his poverty speech, Rubio talked about “reforms that encourage and reward work.” In private, a Rubio aide argued for expansion of a low-skill guest-worker program on the pretext that currently unemployed Americans “can’t cut it.”