The Republicans Draw Their Ad-Guns

It seems like any political campaign consists of speeches of promises which most often don’t get fulfilled and a lot of attack ads which seem to always state false facts. Now this article doesn’t cover the speeches which include unfulfilled promises but it does cover the attack ads which include false facts. The National Republican Congressional Committee spent $5.4 million on 30-second attack ads which began running this weekend. The 27, 30-second TV ads will air in 20 states and run for a week. These adds all have the same purpose, which is to portray the Democratic party as just another part of the Washington government that the United States disapprove of so much. In other words, they are all attack ads on the Democrats running for congress. These ads aim also aim to link the Democrats to the current House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, who is currently the black sheep of the Democratic Party. The N.R.C.C. hopes to single out Democrats in districts that the committee believes Republicans could win in November. One of the ads attacks the independence of Representative Frank Kratovil Jr., a Democrat from Maryland’s First District. The add claims that Representative Kratovil not only, “voted to make Nancy Pelosi speaker” but also “voted with Pelosi 84 percent of the time.” The Frank Kratovil campaign completely rejects and disapproves of this add. Jessica Klonsky, Mr. Kratovil’s campaign manager says, “The N.R.C.C. is twisting the facts in an attempt to mislead voters about Frank” and that the truth is, “he has voted against more than $6 trillion in spending and is ranked one of the 10 most independent members of Congress.”

In another attacking add filled with false facts and false messages, the N.R.C.C. goes after Representative Jim Marshall from Georgia’s Eighth District. The ad features an animated Ms. Pelosi cruising around the nation’s capital with Mr. Marshall in a red convertible. The ad claims that, “Jim voted with her almost 90 percent of the time.” Just as the Kratovil campaign refute the commercial by the N.R.C.C. the marshal campaign also refutes the figures presented in this commercial saying how they are “utterly false” and “not defensible.” In fact, a comparison of their records on roll call votes since January 2007 from OpenCongress, an independent, nonprofit, and most likely non-bias, Web site that tracks Congressional votes, puts their joint voting record at 66 percent. This number is far lower than those presented by N.R.C.C. on their ad, showing how false the claims in their ad were. These attacking commercials are just part of the never ending chain of attack ads by each of the parties. Whether it is a race for Senate, the House of Representative or for President, attack ads will always be out there and running. And I am sure that in no time the Democrats will have a stream of attack ads about the Republican candidates.