Let's say for a moment that you were an operative for a political party that was responsible for the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, forcing a massive bailout of Wall Street. Furthermore, let's say your party fought tooth and nail against imposing new regulations on Wall Street to prevent a repeat of the crisis that nearly took down the entire U.S. economy. And to top it all off, your party had opposed bailing out the auto industry, apparently because banking is more important than manufacturing.
Now, let's say your party's establishment decided to nominate a former Wall Street executive who became wealthy benefiting from the policies your party had fought for, including a tax rate lower than what most Americans pay—and that this was all happening as Occupy Wall Street highlighted the widening gulf between the super wealthy and the rest of America. If that were the case, what would you do?
Most people would probably switch parties. Really, who wants to defend all that shit? But the operatives at the American Future Fund, a 501(c)(4) independent expenditure committee that doesn't need to disclose its donors, have come up with a different solution: a $4 million ad campaign attacking the other guy (in this case, President Obama) for all the things that their party is responsible for.
The result is one of the most dishonest attack ads of 2012. It's not that it's unreasonable to question President Obama's track record on Wall Street. But to do so with the explicit goal of electing a Republican in his place who is guilty of everything in the ad and then some is the height of absurdity.