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Rush Limbaugh warned on Monday that "It’s up to me and Fox News" to stop the threat of amnesty for illegal immigrants he sees in a new bipartisan immigration reform plan. But it's looking like it's up to Sen. Marco Rubio to sell Limbaugh and other Fox News devotees on backing the plan. Rubio will go on Limbaugh's show Tuesday to help sell the proposal. Rubio's sales pitch to Limbaugh will be a telling moment in his crusade to limit conservative backlash against an immigration deal. Rubio, one of the Republican senators backing the plan, went on Sean Hannity's show Monday night to sell the proposal, emphasizing that stronger enforcement of immigration laws would come "before we can move toward a path for green cards – because citizenship comes after that." Last week, before the Senate proposal was unveiled, Rubio successfully charmed conservative talk radio host Mark Levin. "We have de facto amnesty right now," Levin said. "When [Rubio] said it, it set a light bulb off."
In Rubio's interview with Hannity, Rubio showed his fluency in the major conservative complaints about amnesty by promising his bill would address all of them. Compare what Rubio said on Fox News to, for example, what two South Carolina conservatives, Ken Sowell and Bill Storey, told The New York Times' Michael D. Shear about why they opposed reform: