As soon as we heard about Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley's remarks slighting GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley as "a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school," we wondered if they'd get used in an attack ad. Two days later, the answer is "yes." A conservative group founded by a couple of former Mitt Romney staffers called Priorities for Iowa says they're spending $250,000 to air an ad featuring Braley's comments. (Braley isn't running against Grassley but rather for Iowa's other Senate seat, left open by Democrat Tom Harkin's retirement.)
The heart of the spot, though, isn't particularly well-executed. The ad bounces back and forth between a narrator trying to provide context and fragments of Braley speaking, with some kind of night-vision filter layered on to make the video footage look like it captured a super-secret event.
Narrator: Bruce Braley is putting Iowa's Senate seat up for sale.
Braley: If you help me win this race...
Narrator: Caught at a closed-door fundraiser with trial lawyers in Texas, Braley says if they don't help him, Chuck Grassley...
Braley: A farmer from Iowa, who never went to law school...
Narrator: Might be the next Senate Judiciary Committee chairman.
Republicans are lucky they captured Braley on tape, but they diminish the impact of his own words by splicing it with all this chatter. Braley, though, isn't helping his own case, sending out a press release touting his agriculture cred that was
filled with misspellings of common farming terms. It's such a minor thing, but when you're back on your heels like this, you don't want to wind up looking like
Harold Ford in a hunting cap.