Ever since Wednesday morning, you may have noticed Ted Cruz's statements in support of immigration reform circa 2013 suddenly making the rounds. Those remarks run in direct contradiction to his outright lie Tuesday night.

“I have never supported legalization, and I do not intend to support legalization,” Cruz declared.

Well, turns out Rubio's campaign had been waiting for just such a statement, reports Eli Stokols.

In that moment, Rubio campaign manager Terry Sullivan, top adviser Todd Harris and communications director Alex Conant recognized what they’d accomplished because they’d been planning this exchange all along. Not only had Cruz just contradicted his own statements from 2013, he’d used words that gave them the opening they’d been wanting to turn their rival’s anti-establishment narrative on its head. Joe Pounder, the GOP opposition research guru who recently joined Rubio’s campaign, was sitting back in Washington on a stockpile of quotes and video clips of Cruz’s 2013 statements. And they didn’t even have to talk about it. The decision was made: it’s time to launch.

Cruz had not only supported legalization, he had sponsored an amendment to comprehensive immigration reform that would have explicitly delivered legalization (even as it stripped away the path to citizenship).

Rubio's no immigration hero, to be sure. But watching the ever duplicitous Cruz get nailed is admittedly pretty sweet.