SEABROOK, New Hampshire — New Hampshire’s GOP U.S. Senate candidate Scott Brown ripped President Obama’s planned executive amnesty and said the administration’s quiet preparation to issue up to 34 million green cards and employment permits shows the president is willing to circumvent Congress.
“I’m against it, absolutely,” Brown said here when asked to react to a report from Breitbart News late Sunday evening that found the administration is building its capacity to issue millions of new ID cards to immigrants, despite his claims to wait until after the election. “To think that we’re going to circumvent Congress and circumvent our laws to provide additional status for people who have broken the law without even securing the border? It makes no sense.”
Brown lit into incumbent Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), who he is challenging in the upcoming Nov. 4 general election, for not doing anything at all to stop Obama’s executive amnesty for millions of illegal aliens–despite her claims earlier this year that she did not support the president. Back in September, before the president decided to delay the executive amnesty until after the election, Shaheen issued a statement in which she said she “would not support a piecemeal approach issued by executive order” because she believes House Republicans “should pass the bipartisan reform bill the Senate cleared last year,” according to Bloomberg.
“She has a history of supporting the president’s policies on immigration, on the DREAM Act, on border security,” Brown told Breitbart News in an interview in the front desk area of Brown’s Lobster Pound here in Seabrook, New Hampshire. “She has not voted to secure the border. She has not voted to send troops to the border. She has supported not only his previous attempts to provided expanded status for those folks, but she’s supported the DREAM Act. I think it’s for political expediency right now that she’s ‘not going to support him’ but in reality she’s going to back him up as much as she can and as often as she can.”
Former Rep. Frank Guinta (R-NH), who is challenging incumbent Democrat Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH) for his old seat, said this shows Obama’s pattern of circumventing Congress–and Democrats are failing to stand up to him.
“There is a legislative process that this president is ignoring on almost every single issue: Healthcare, amnesty, NSA–you name it,” Guinta told Breitbart News. “He seems to be issuing executive orders or going through administrative rule making. It’s wrong. You have got to follow the constitution regardless of who the president is and the House and the Senate need to act on these important issues and I think this is where the country is getting frustrated with him and the way he has usurped the authority of the legislative body.”
Former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, who was known in the 2012 election as one of the loudest and most aggressive surrogates for GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, said the best thing Shaheen can do to stop Obama if she really opposes his executive amnesty is lose her re-election bid on Nov. 4.
“The best thing Jeanne Shaheen can do to stop executive amnesty is lose, and she’s going to,” Sununu said in an interview with Breitbart News. “Executive amnesty is an absolute disaster for the country and frankly it is a dumb political move for the president. It will backfire on him.”
Sununu also said that over the past two years, it’s become evident that Obama is a failed president.
“Everything I said in 2012 was an absolute understatement,” Sununu said. “This administration is incompetent, they don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t do their homework, they don’t take their intelligence briefs and they’re ruining America.”
A mile to the south of here is Salisbury, Massachusetts, is the northernmost tip of the state Brown used to represent in the U.S. Senate before moving to New Hampshire after Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) beat him in 2012’s election. But Brown, who’s in a statistical tie with Shaheen — the two keep trading minuscule leads — is benefiting from a purpler state than blue Massachusetts and a national disapproval of Obama.
“What’s the mission?” Brown said, regarding the thousands of troops Obama is sending to West Africa to combat the Ebola outbreak. “I want to know what the mission is, what the parameters are, what they’re going to do to keep them safe and secure. What are they going to do? Do we have ‘Ebola fighters?’ Do we have somebody whose MOS, their actual military mission, is to be an ‘Ebola fighter?’ Are they building hospitals? What are they doing? He needs to come up with a plan and he needs to inform the American people what the plan is. We need to make sure that our soldiers are safe and secure. I’ve always had a question about what’s the mission? What’s the goal? That’s what I’m looking for.”
Sununu said that Obama’s failure to handle the Ebola crisis effectively is yet another in a long line of Obama “mess-ups.”
“People ask me how I think he’s handling Ebola,” Sununu said. “He hasn’t handled a single thing since he’s been president in a proper manner, and Ebola is just another string of mess-ups by this administration.”
Guinta said he doesn’t understand why it took Shea-Porter and Shaheen so long to back a travel ban, since it shouldn’t be a partisan political issue.
“I don’t think he’s handling this very well at all,” Guinta said. “The last several crises we’ve had, he seems to be disconnected from these particular issues. I called for a travel ban almost immediately. The president for whatever reason doesn’t want to do that. It took Carol Shea-Porter until a few days ago to call for one. Jeanne Shaheen flipped I think today. They don’t understand that this shouldn’t be a partisan issue–it should be about protecting America.”
In the middle of his interview with Breitbart News, Brown gets a phone call. “Hi, Mom,” Brown shouts into the phone in the noisy seafood haunt right on the bay and a mile or so from the ocean. “Hang on a second.”
“Do you see a pattern here?” Brown replies when asked about ISIS terrorists gaining more territory in the Middle East despite the president’s airstrikes and tough talk against them, as we pick the interview back up. “A pattern of confusion as evidenced by him picking an Ebola czar who has no experience dealing with this type of situation. There’s a pattern of confusion and not reassuring the American people. And there’s a pattern of reacting instead of being proactive. I’m deeply concerned about ISIS. I’m concerned about Ebola. I’m concerned about our troops. I’m concerned about his effort to expand status for people and gearing up with status that they haven’t earned and circumventing Congress and with respect to Sen. Shaheen, she’s been endorsing those failed policies from almost day one. For her to try to now separate herself, it’s clearly for political purposes.”
Brown has been attacked by the mainstream media and the left for waging the political battles on immigration, ISIS and ebola. But Brown says he doesn’t care.
“They can attack me all they want. This is reality,” Brown said when asked about all the negativity from the institutional left and mainstream media. “We’re dealing with a non-secure border. We’re dealing with a situation where the president said we were going to stamp out this disease and we were never going to have to deal with it. Well, we’ve had one person die and two people infected and we don’t have a clear and concise policy as to: What’s the plan? What are we doing? What do we need to do? And quite frankly, how can we help? They can attack all they want. But people in New Hampshire, they are deeply concerned about safe and secure borders. They are deeply concerned about the lack of coherent policy from the president. They are deeply concerned about ISIS and ISIS gaining any type of advantage to bring terrorism to our country. So I’m going to keep talking about real issues. She can talk about smearing my record and talking about everything but her record, everything but her voting with the president 99 percent of the time. That’s what they’re trying to do. I get it. And so do the people of New Hampshire.”
Brown’s brash, stick-it-to-the-man style of smash mouth politics–and his nationalizing of this race–is lifting candidates like Guinta and others statewide up.
“People are frustrated. They want new leadership,” Guinta told Breitbart News. “There’s a sense that there’s no captain of the ship right now and whether they like it or not, that’s going to negatively affect Democrats who have supported the president 100 percent of the time. That includes Jeanne Shaheen and Carol Shea-Porter.”
But perhaps nobody could sum it up better than Brown himself.
“This race isn’t about me,” Brown said in his remarks to the Seabrook Republican Committee event. “It’s not about Frank [Guinta]. It’s not about us. It’s about restoring New Hampshire and it’s about restoring America.”