Marco Rubio’s staffers seem to understand that this race is likely to boil down to a race between their employer and Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas. As a result, they apparently feel the need to smear their guy’s main rival.

They do that by spreading a video in which Ted Cruz appears to support amnesty — at least in some cases and for some people. Here’s a tweet in which a staffer makes the case that Cruz is a new convert to the “no amnesty” point of view:

And then there is this one:

.@tedcruz in 2013: “the 11 million who are here illegally would be granted legal status” https://t.co/yCZ3DrMT38 — Joe Pounder (@PounderFile) November 13, 2015

Shocking, right? Ted Cruz attacks Rubio for being a pro-amnesty guy, but he shared that opinion only a few years ago! Oh no, what a liar! What a hack!

There’s just one minor problem: as former Cruz staffer Amanda Carpenter explains, Ted didn’t actually support amnesty. He only put this amendment forward in order to show to voters that the Gang of 8 wasn’t telling the truth about whether or not their amnesty plans would eventually result in a path to citizenship for illegal aliens:

She continued:

In other words, Rubio’s staffers are using a trick Cruz used to expose their boss’ secret plans to give illegal aliens a path of citizenship against him. They’re turning it upside down, inside out, and deceiving conservatives in order to destroy a candidate who is and has always been against amnesty.

This is how the Rubio folks roll: it could’ve come straight out of Karl Rove’s playbook. I guess that proves that Rubio did indeed learn a lot from Jeb Bush; more than he’s willing to admit.

Disclosure: Michael van der Galien co-founded Ted Cruz 45.