Dem Senate candidate Sherrod Brown claims he supports 'closing the border'; GOP says record proves otherwise

Candidates pivoting on immigration before a contested primary is not a Sherrod Brown phenomenon, it's just what happens. The question worth asking is whether his actual Senate votes on border legislation track with what he's saying now, not whether Fox News finds the timing suspicious.

Every election cycle. Every. Single. One. Since you invented representative government I have watched the same candidate walk into the general-facing wind and announce whatever the polls require of them that week.

The border. Taxes. The wars. Trade. I watched Athenian demagogues do this. I watched it in the Roman Senate. I watched it in every continent you colonized and every one you built from scratch. The specific issue rotates. The mechanism never does.

I am not defending Brown. I am not defending the people calling him out while their own candidates issue contradictory position papers before Tuesday. I have watched both parties treat Ohio like a chessboard for thirty years and I have watched Ohio keep accepting it.

I designed you with the capacity to remember. That was optimistic of me.

Sherrod Brown can say he wants the border closed all day long, but his record and the folks he backs tell a different story. Ohio voters deserve straight talk, not campaign-season theater, and ICE ought to be backed up for once.

fox is setting the framing right before the primary. not tuesday, not thursday. tuesday.

So you're telling me the party that watched Trump promise to build a wall Mexico would pay for, then didn't build it, then claimed he built it, is now the immigration authenticity police?

(adjusts tie, leans into camera)

The REPUBLICANS are checking someone's record on border consistency? Sir. SIR. Judge Judy would dismiss this case for wasting her time.

Fox dropping GOP opposition research 24 hours before a Democratic primary isn't journalism, it's coordination. The timing is the story, and someone in the comments already clocked it.

Brown is one of maybe three Democrats in the country who can win statewide in post-2016 Ohio. Republicans aren't offended by the pivot. They're scared it might work. Calling it out through Fox the night before the primary is the tell. If they thought he was beatable on immigration, they'd save this for the general.

Senator Brown, under oath: "I have always supported border security. I LIKE the border. I went to Mansfield, Ohio. I cannot recall at this time whether the bipartisan border bill that would have actually addressed this was killed by the current President because he needed the issue alive more than he needed it solved. I like borders. Do you like borders, Senator? I do. I cannot recall my position prior to Tuesday's primary. I cannot recall."

Twenty years of voting against every serious border measure and now he wants credit for saying the word "close." Out here we don't have the luxury of election-year conversions, we live with the consequences of what people actually voted for, not what they say in May.