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Gingrich: Don't trust Rubio, McCain on immigration

January 30, 2013 | 2:08 pm | Modified: January 30, 2013 at 2:10 pm
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Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is warning Republicans not to trust the immigration reform proposed by Sens. Marco Rubio and John McCain, dismissing it as a secretly plotted plan too big and comprehensive to win support--or change the nation's immigration quagmire.

"I don't trust anybody in either party when they go into secret meetings," Gingrich said in a radio interview this morning. And he warned on the "The Andrea Tantaros Show," that "it could be a set up."

Gingrich, who won applause for his piecemeal immigration reform package during the 2012 GOP presidential primaries, said he would not endorse the bipartisan immigration reform pushed by McCain and Rubio--and that is extremely similar to President Obama's offering.

"No, no," he told Tantaros when asked if he would endorse the plan. A tape of the show was provided to Secrets.

Gingrich said that the House should take the lead and start with visa reform. He said the House GOP has a better history of working up reform plans in public.

"Frankly, I'm pretty tired of a handful of people in Washington, starting with the president, meeting in secret meetings in closed rooms to cut giant deals to come out with a 'yes' or 'no' vote to then tell the rest of us that it will be a catastrophe if we vote 'no.' I think that's really bad government and I don't think it produces good ideas," said Gingrich.

He said that the GOP has to act on immigration, explaining that presidential candidate Mitt Romney blew the election because he lost the Hispanic vote.

"Had Governor Romney gotten 36 percent of the Latino vote, he would have won a majority of the popular vote," said Gingrich. Referring to new polling he has viewed, Gingrich added that after Romney in a debate suggested that illegal immigrants self-deport, Latino support for Romney plunged 50 percent.

The Tantaros show replaced Laura Ingraham on the TRN network and is produced by The Fox and Rice Experience.

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