Hohhh boy. This is not the kind of thing you do when you’re feeling good about your political fortunes. Republicans have grown increasingly fearful that Democrat Jon Ossoff will pull off a huge upset in the special election for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District by winning a majority of the vote in the April 18 primary and thereby avert a runoff. To avert that catastrophe, GOP groups are spending over $4 million on attack ads, but the flop-sweat is now pouring off them in sheets. How do we know?
Because Paul Ryan’s Congressional Leadership Fund is trying to tie Ossoff to fucking Osama bin Laden in its newest web ad. Just get a load of this horseshit:
NARRATOR: Al Jazeera—a media outlet that has been described as a “mouthpiece for terrorists”—has been paying Jon Ossoff thousands of dollars. But Jon refuses to tell voters exactly how much money he’s received. Just like Jon refuses to tell voters the truth about his experience. What is he hiding? How can we trust him?
And whose ugly mug shows up at the three-second mark? The terrorist mastermind who, oh yeah, was brought to justice by Democratic President Barack Obama. This is of course garbage through and through: Ossoff runs a company that makes documentaries investigating crime and corruption for a broad array of news organizations, and as Kaili Joy Gray notes at Shareblue, the tired dig at Al Jazeera comes from a defunct conservative website that no one’s ever heard of or cares about.
Oh, and Osama bin Laden is still dead. Thanks, Obama.
But this kind of fearmongering is exactly what we’ve come to expect from soulless Republicans. In fact, this spot is incredibly similar to another infamous GOP ad used to smear a different Georgia Democrat, former Sen. Max Cleland—a triple amputee and Vietnam War hero—by linking him with images of bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Thanks to that ad, Cleland lost a tough bid for re-election, so it’s only natural Republicans are returning to the same skullduggery that served them so well in the Peach State.
We won’t let them get away with that same trash this time, though. Republicans are descending into the muck because they are in panic mode. Let’s make them freak out some more.
Give $3 to Jon Ossoff today. Remember Max Cleland, and don’t let the GOP smear good Democrats again.