Marco Rubio entered the first floor of the Senate, sneaking up a back stairwell to cast his biggest vote of the year: advancing President Barack Obama’s trade agenda.

The Florida Republican stayed on the Senate floor for a minute, then darted down a staircase, ignoring questions about conservative criticism of a bill some on the right have derisively dubbed “Obamatrade.”


“Not today,” Rubio, the presidential hopeful, said as he rushed out of the Senate.

Rubio’s mum posture on Tuesday underscores how divisive the issue has become in Republican presidential politics. While a vast majority of Republicans in both houses of Congress voted to advance the trade agenda, a vocal segment of the GOP base has aggressively attacked the plan, contending it would hurt American workers, change immigration laws and give Obama too much power.

It’s the latest chapter in the intraparty struggle that’s consumed the GOP since the 2010 midterms, as business-minded Republicans battle with the tea party wing over the party’s identity and direction.

The influence of the activist right was on vivid display Tuesday when Ted Cruz, the Texas firebrand who has aligned himself with that segment of the GOP, sharply reversed course on trade. After vocally supporting fast-track trade authority for Obama, Cruz announced that he would oppose the plan. He cited “corrupt” backroom deal-making that, he contended, would weaken U.S. immigration policies and even lead to the extension of the charter for the controversial Export-Import Bank.

“I support free trade and have vocally supported free trade for a long time,” Cruz told reporters after the vote. “But the cronyism and the backroom deals are unacceptable.”

Republican proponents strongly disputed the assertions.

“I imagine that helps him with the far right,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the Finance Committee chairman and co-author of the trade bill. “But it sure doesn’t help him with mainline Republicans. It certainly doesn’t help him with the business Republicans. It doesn’t help him with the free-market, free-enterprise Republicans.”

Hatch added: “The far right is against this. Why? I’ll never understand.”

With most Democrats resistant to free trade agreements, the Republican Party has long been the power behind them, delivering critical votes to enact the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993, the Central American deal in 2005 and the 2011 South Korean accord — among others.

“In Republicans’ DNA is trade,” Idaho Sen. Jim Risch said Tuesday.

But conservative antipathy toward Obama is strong. And conservatives are split over whether they should give his administration more power to cut major trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would affect 40 percent of the world’s economy — even though that authority would carry over to the next president.

Combined with general skepticism toward trade among Republicans in the South, where sectors like textile have been decimated, a bloc of conservatives has joined with Democrats in an attempt to undermine the centerpiece of Obama’s economic agenda. That split is playing out on the campaign trail, as well.

“It’s time for Republicans to update their trade orthodoxy,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who opposed the bill on the grounds that it could open the door to more foreign workers taking American jobs.

That division played out in real time Tuesday, as the Senate broke a Democratic-led filibuster to advance a fast-track trade bill. The legislation would allow Congress to approve or reject trade deals like the TPP — but, critically, not to amend them. Forty-seven Republicans voted to advance the fast-track bill, siding with just 13 Democrats.

Only five Republicans voted to block the proposal — and two of them were presidential hopefuls: Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. The other two Republican presidential candidates, Rubio and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, voted to advance the measure.

Paul lashed the “secrecy” surrounding the TPP talks, something critics on the right and left have seized upon.

”I think one of the biggest problems we face in our country is the law of separation of powers and the accumulation of too much power in the executive branch,” Paul told POLITICO on Tuesday. “And the reason why I’m opposed to the TPA is I think it gives the president more power, and I think the president already has got too much power.”

Paul didn’t seem too concerned that his opposition to the trade initiative — combined with his positions aimed at prohibiting ground troops against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and to repeal the PATRIOT Act — would fuel criticism that he espouses an isolationist view of the world. In fact, he said, “people compliment my position on TPA” along the campaign trail.

The crowded Republican field is starkly divided on the issue. While Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Rubio back the trade agenda, Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee have both expressed concerns with granting Obama fast-track trade authority. And while Rubio has previously spoken out in support of the TPP, Graham has only recently come around on the trade deal, fearing that failure of the sweeping accord would only strengthen China in the Pacific Rim.

That schism is reflected among the American public at large. Just 31 percent of voters said in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll in June that they would have a more favorable view of a candidate if he or she backed the TPP; the same percentage said they would have a less favorable view. In that poll, 34 percent of voters believed trade has hurt the United States, compared with 29 percent who believed it has helped — an eight-point swing downward since April.

Moreover, a Pew Research Center survey from May found that half of self-identified Republicans believe that trade deals lead to job losses, compared with just 15 percent who believe they create jobs.

Cruz didn’t cite such poll numbers as a reason why he flipped. He said that recently leaked documents from WikiLeaks showed how the administration was trying to change federal immigration law in a separate trade deal it was negotiating — something the Obama administration and Republican proponents have strongly denied.

“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, a fellow Texas Republican, when asked about Cruz’s contention that GOP leaders had cut an unseemly deal.

“It is presidential election season,” Cornyn said. “I don’t think we were counting on his vote to pass it, anyway.”

Cruz contended that GOP leaders misled him over “corrupt” backroom deal-making to appease Graham and two Washington state Democratic senators, who were previously assured they would have a vote to extend the Export-Import Bank, whose charter expires at month’s end. Cruz argued that the bank amounts to “corporate welfare,” splitting with the business community, which says it is essential to boost American exports.

“By all appearances, there is an agreement with leadership to reauthorize it days after it expires,” Cruz told reporters.

Graham shot back, saying that candidates like Cruz “don’t have the guts to come down [to South Carolina] and look Boeing and GE in the eye” to tell them they want to kill the Ex-Im Bank, the expiration of which, he said, would “cost them their jobs.”

“This is a manufactured issue, no pun intended,” Graham said, saying conservative candidates were on an “ideological crusade” to raise “tons of money” from groups opposed to the bank.

As far as criticism from the right that Congress shouldn’t enact “Obamatrade,” Graham said: “All I can say is when we did this for Bush, nobody called it ‘Bushtrade.’”