Attending an annual confab of border hawks last week, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) didn’t have to look far to find another reminder of how difficult it may be to sell a bipartisan bill to overhaul the nation’s immigration system to a skeptical conservative base.
Slate’s Dave Weigel reported on Thursday from Hold Their Feet to the Fire, a gathering in Washington, D.C. of talk radio hosts and activists spearheaded by Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) where Rubio was scheduled to appear.
As Rubio’s arrival time nears, two activists wait outside for him. One of them, Pat DeFilippis, wears a button that’s been handed out by a rogue (i.e., non-FAIR) activist—a picture of Rubio wearing a sombrero, superimposed on the Mexican flag, between the words AMNISTIA! andRINO. (Cuban-Americans can wear sombreros, but it’s highly unusual.) She’s ready to give Rubio a flyer about unemployed Americans, marked “in memory of … all victims of illegal aliens.”
Weigel also tweeted a photo of the buttons.
Very subtle. twitter.com/daveweigel/sta…
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) April 18, 2013
On Monday, The Daily Caller’s Alex Pappas tweeted a picture of the buttons as well, adding that they were distributed Friday on Capitol Hill.
