Thread: The national GOP just labeled Marco Rubio’s immigration bill ‘amnesty’

The national GOP just labeled Marco Rubio’s immigration bill ‘amnesty’

By Aaron Blake September 9 at 2:39 PM

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is out with a new ad in the Georgia Senate race hitting Democrat Michelle Nunn for supporting "amnesty." It's a pretty interesting ad -- especially given Republicans appear to be starting to use immigration as a wedge issue.

It's most interesting, though, because the "amnesty" cited in the ad appears to be the Senate immigration bill -- the very same Senate immigration bill spearheaded by potential GOP presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and supported by 13 other GOP senators.

The citations used in the ad are an Obama speech from 2013 -- in which Nunn is not mentioned -- and an Aug. 21 Politico story. In the story, which recaps a debate between Nunn and Republican David Perdue, Nunn says she opposes Obama's planned use of an executive action to legalize undocumented immigrants, but said she supports the immigration bill passed in the Senate last year.

Nunn also tried to distance herself from Barack Obama. She said the president should not issue any executive orders on immigration, chided him for wanting to cut military spending and brought up — in her opening statement — that a picture appearing in Republican ads of her standing with Obama is cropped to remove former President George H.W. Bush....On immigration, Nunn said she would have voted for the bill that passed the Senate last year — noting that it had the support of both conservative Marco Rubio and liberal Chuck Schumer. She accused Perdue of mischaracterizing its path to citizenship as amnesty.

Ipso facto, Rubio's immigration bill is now "amnesty," at least according to this ad.

This isn't entirely novel. National parties will often use votes on which some of their members voted with the other party in a negative light, in states where it works in their favor.

But if the national GOP insists on labeling the Senate immigration bill "amnesty" going forward, they're going to make 14 Senate Republicans -- and one potential GOP presidential candidate -- pretty unhappy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...-bill-amnesty/