TIME Politics 2016 Election T.J. KirkpatrickGetty Images Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) reacts to U.S. President Barack Obama's announcement about revising policies on U.S.-Cuba relations on December 17, 2014 in Washington, DC.
The path to the White House does not lead through Congressional gridlock.
As Congress heads toward a showdown over immigration and the budget for the Department of Homeland Security, the three Republican Senators who are considering running for president are staying on the sidelines.
Sens. Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are hanging back from the fight, letting others like Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions lead the strategy and take the megaphone. Top national Republican strategists say thats a smart move, given the difficulty of scoring a clean win in this legislative mess.
The main disadvantage of being a sitting senator is that your opponents and the media force you to own every controversy during every legislative fight, even though some outcomes are usually out of your control, said Kevin Madden, a senior aide in former Gov. Mitt Romneys presidential campaigns.
The Homeland Security funding fight is also a particularly bad one to champion. The current Republican strategy is to risk a shutdown of the agency in an attempt to force President Obama to override his own executive actions to defer deportations for millions in the U.S. illegally. But many of the related programs are paid for by fees, which means a shutdown wont affect them, while polls show the public will blame Republicans for a shutdown.
This is working out exactly the way the President and Democrats want it to work out, says Rob Jesmer, a top member of FWD.us, a pro-immigration reform group, and former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Were not going to look very good, he added of Republicans. No one is going to look very good. The sooner this gets behind us the better it is.
The fight has already caused headaches for one potential White House suitor. After he simply noted that Republicans dont have enough votes in the Senate to pass a bill override Obamas executive actions, Rubio faced headlines in conservative media that said he had caved, folded and retreated, even though he had stopped short of actually calling for a spending bill without conditions.
Paul and Cruz, meantime, havent paid any price back home for laying low.
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Republican Presidential Hopefuls Stay Out of Senate Fight on Immigration