Marco Rubio Claims The GOP Is The Party Of Diversity

Responding to a question in Thursday's GOP debate about whether Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Marco Rubio (Fla.), both children of Cuban immigrants, were missing opportunities to appeal to Hispanic voters, Rubio said, “We have to move past this idea that somehow, the Hispanic community only cares about immigration.”

Pointing to to the fact that two of the five remaining Republican presidential candidates are Hispanic and one is black, Rubio said, “We are the party of diversity, not the Democratic party.”

The biggest issue for Hispanic voters, he continued, is “the burning desire to leave your children better off than yourself. And you can only do that through free enterprise.”

Rubio had just finished defending his plan to repeal deportation protections for young undocumented immigrations on his first day in office, despite having sympathy for “someone who came here when they were 2 or 3 years old through no fault of their own.”

He justified the move by saying, “We cannot violate the Constitution of the United States the way [Obama] does on a regular basis.”