Less than a week ago, Blanche Lincoln took the stage knowing that she was headed for a run-off election with Bill Halter. In her speech, the “comeback kid” (as Attorney General Dustin McDaniel ridiculously called Lincoln) said:
“I want to call on Bill Halter to end all of his negative ads, and I will too. This should be a race about the issues, and not all of this mudslinging. We also need to call on every one of these outside groups to take their negative ads down and go home.”
Let’s go to the tape! First, Bill Halter ran this ad:
Reviewing the ad last Thursday, I wrote:
Great shots of real people, no mention of the competition, a single message throughout, and probably the most positive tone we’ve had in an ad in this race from either side.
So, that’s where we stood as of Thursday afternoon. Lincoln had called for Halter to end the negative campaigning (and had done so without the slightest hint of irony, oddly enough), and, to the extent they cared one way or the other about Lincoln’s “challenge,” Halter’s camp released an ad two days later that complied 100% with her request.
Then came Lincoln’s ad.
And Bill Halter? Instead of creating jobs in Arkansas, his company outsourced jobs to India. Bill Halter put profits before Arkansas.
At this point, the “outsourcing” lie has been disproved many, many times by many, many people including BHR. Yet, despite that, Lincoln not only repeats it again, but has the gall to do so less than a week after she made it a point to call for no negative ads.
Blanche Lincoln thinks that she can repeat the “outsourcing” lie enough that undecided voters will believe it. She thinks that she can stand with the President in her message to some groups, while standing separate from the President and the rest of Washington to other groups, and that no one will figure out that she’s trying to play both sides. She thinks that she can renege on her own call to end negativity and that those voters either won’t notice or won’t care.
If you are an undecided voter, Blanche Lincoln thinks, basically, that she can dupe you into voting for her. However, only an idiot would be deceived by such transparent and ridiculous measures.
That kind of tells you what she really thinks of you, doesn’t it?