Senator Kelly Ayotte’s statement supporting the Schumer-Rubio bill is indeed dreary and derivative, as Andrew noted: “immigration system is broken,” ”de facto amnesty,” “back of the line,” etc. It’s almost as if it were created by an online Pro-Amnesty Op-ed Generator.
But it’s worse than that. As the indefatigable Daniel Horowitz points out, in her 2010 primary, she ran hard as an anti-amnesty candidate. At the time, she sent mailers attacking opponent Bill Binnie for his skepticism about the Arizona immigratiuon law. Politico posted one of them, sporting an especially ironic tag line and photo:
So, Kelly Ayotte attacked her opponent for “standing together” with Obama on immigration, and now she does the same.
It wasn’t just one mailer. Here’s a Letterman-style list released by her campaign of the top ten things Binnie and Biden had in common:
6.) Binnie and Biden both support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.