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Sen. Rand Paul got headlines Sunday for criticizing the Jeb Bush comment that illegal immigration was sometimes an 'act of love.' But his rebuke was gentle, perhaps because 2016 is looming.

When potential presidential hopeful Jeb Bush said last weekend that illegal immigration was not a felony, but instead often an "act of love," he was surely braced for the blowback from conservatives. And it has come.

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But on Sunday, the latest rebuke was among the gentlest, and that could suggest that the entire tone of the conversation will change next year.

Speaking to ABC News on Sunday, Sen. Rand Paul (R) of Kentucky said Mr. Bush "might have been more artful, maybe, in the way he presented this," adding that the problem with Bush's views are that "we can't invite the whole world."

Senator Paul appears to have his own designs on a White House run in 2016, and he knows that advocating for immigrants who come into the United States illegally is hardly the way into the hearts of most Republican voters. Indeed, Paul was speaking to ABC News from a conservative summit in New Hampshire, where he appeared to be testing the presidential waters with other hopefuls such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R) of Texas and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

This was not the time or the place to go soft on illegal immigration.

Yet Paul kept the flamethrower in the closet. He charitably suggested that Bush was not "terrible" for making the comment and added that "people who seek the American Dream are not bad people."

After all, Paul is not Senator Cruz, whose presidential bid is predicated on turning the Republican base into a quivering ball of outrage. But he's also not Bush, an electable establishment moderate who appears to be thumbing his nose at the tea party right.

Read more from the original source:

Why Rand Paul didn't really blast Jeb Bush on immigration