Double down.
Via Politico:
Jeb Bush defended his controversial comments about immigration reform, insisting they were nothing new for him and urging “sensitivity to the immigrant experience.”
At a Connecticut Republican party dinner Thursday night, the former Republican governor of Florida did not repeat his remarks from last weekend at his father’s presidential library, when he said that people who come to the United States illegally in search of a better life for their children “broke the law, but it’s not a felony. It’s an act of love.”
This time the potential 2016 candidate put it differently.
“To be young and dynamic again we have to be young and dynamic again,” Bush said, adding that people need to view “immigration reform not as a problem, but as a huge opportunity.”
“This past weekend, I made some statements about immigration reform [that] generated a little more news than I anticipated,” Bush told the crowd of more than 700 guests at the annual Prescott Bush Award dinner, an event named for his grandfather.
“You know, I’ve been saying this for the last three or four years, I said the exact same thing that I’ve said regularly,” he said. “And the simple fact is, there is no conflict between enforcing our laws, believing in the rule of law and having some sensitivity to the immigrant experience, which is part of who we are as a country.”