She said it was okay for Americans to join the Taliban and fight against America, equated dead illegal aliens with dead U.S. soldiers, called her home state “crazy” and the “meth lab of democracy,” and summoned witches for an anti-war rally. That’s certainly a good résumé for a candidate seeking office in San Francisco, NYC’s Greenwich Village, or Port-au-Prince. But Representative Kyrsten Sinema is running for the Senate from Arizona — and now is running from her past.

Currently in a tight race with Representative Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) for Republican senator Jeff Flake’s open seat, Sinema has long prepared for this moment, largely by donning a different mask. As the New York Times wrote in September:

When Kyrsten Sinema began her rise in Arizona politics in the early 2000s, she was a Ralph Nader supporter and local spokeswoman for the Green Party who worked to repeal the death penalty and organized antiwar protests after the Sept. 11 attacks.

But today, as the Democratic nominee for Senate from Arizona in one of the most pivotal races in the country, Ms. Sinema is campaigning as an altogether different person. While she is now a three-term member of Congress, Ms. Sinema is running as much on her biography — her three years spent homeless as a child — as on any issue. She is using that personal hardship to project grit and distinguish herself from “most people in politics,” as she says.

… To the frustration of many Arizona progressives, Ms. Sinema has shifted from a firebrand — she told The Arizona Republic in 2003 “that the real Saddam and Osama lovers were Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush” — to membership in the congressional Blue Dog Coalition, the most conservative group of House Democrats. Last year, she joined a small group of Democrats to back a bill that was promoted by President Trump and named for a woman killed by an undocumented immigrant, which would significantly stiffen penalties on migrants who illegally re-enter the country.

Such political shape-shifting isn’t unusual. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) morphed from relatively conservative to leftist when seeking to trade her congressional seat in rural upstate New York for the senator’s job. Ex-vice president Al Gore transitioned from pro-life to pro-prenatal infanticide when seeking national Democrat prominence. And recent undercover operations have exposed Phil Bredesen (D-Tenn.) and Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) as leftists masquerading as moderates to fool voters. But while these two shape-shifters were unmasked by hidden camera, Sinema wasn’t hiding her views — at least not when she uttered them.

Here are some highlights (lowlights?):

In a 2003 radio interview (recording below), she addressed the matter of Americans joining the Taliban to fight against the United States and said, “I don't care if you want to do that, go ahead.” Some have called this treasonous.

In 2006, Sinema said that the deaths illegals suffer “in the Mexico-Arizona desert [sneaking into our country] are the same as the deaths that people suffer in the Iraq desert.”

Moreover, referencing immigration laws in a 2009 profile, she wrote, “I oppose all of them.”

Unable to defend the indefensible, Sinema refused to address the Taliban comment when asked about it by Representative McSally in a recent debate; deflecting, she instead accused her opponent of dirty campaigning (video below).

But Sinema doesn’t seem to like her own state any more than its borders. While speaking at a leftist Netroots Nation conference in 2010, she called Arizona “the meth lab of democracy” (video below).

Continuing this theme the next year while addressing a homosexual “rights” group, she called her state’s residents “crazy” and offered advice on how you can “stop your state from becoming Arizona,” as she put it (video below).

Clearly, Sinema isn’t exactly adhering to the principles in How to Win Friends and Influence People. Then again, as Hot Air theorized today, “Maybe this is a new compromise position by Democrats amid all the chatter lately about how unfair it is that the Senate guarantees equal representation for small states. If you can’t amend the Constitution to change that and you can’t convince Americans to add senators for Puerto Rico and D.C., you can at least try to elect Democrats from red jurisdictions who hate their home states.”

So what is Sinema, this woman who changes guises like clothes? The New York Times relates, “‘What she’s always been is not a centrist or a bold progressive but an opportunist,’ said Tomas Robles, an immigration activist who said Ms. Sinema would not meet with his group. ‘She’s very smart about what the political climate is and where she wants to make her next move.’” Smart? “Crafty” is a better word.

But Robles doesn’t have it completely right. The default for unprincipled people is to embrace the spirit of the age, the fashions; thus were such shape-shifters Marxists in 1917 Russia, fascists in 1929 Italy, and Nazis in 1938 Germany. And today they’re anti-American, social-justice-warrior, snowflake leftists.

Also realize that today’s leftism is the philosophy of vice, of sin, of preference and not principle. So while vice-loving people may say whatever is necessary to con their audience, their passions always lie with their misbegotten leftist pseudo-ideology.

Lastly, remember that no matter what’s said while campaigning, federal politicians tend to vote with their party 85 to 90 percent of the time. It’s unlikely Sinema will be an exception.

In fact, if you think the party of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Dianne Feinstein is radical now, just wait till it’s defined by Shape-shifter Sinema and her bold-and-borderless neo-Bolshevik band.

Image of Kyrsten Sinema: Screenshot of Sinema.house.gov