The media is calling it a “shooting war:”
The television ad campaign has turned into a shooting war in Kentucky as Alison Lundergan Grimes has grabbed her gun for a commercial that began airing Monday in an effort to caputure [sic] November’s election.
But McConnell’s campaign took aim at that ad on Tuesday with it’s own 30-second spot that mocks Grimes and draws comparisons to a 2012 photo of Obama firing a gun while vacationing at Camp David.
The battle over guns is like so many others in the campaign so far, said Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “These ads are going to appeal to partisans,” he said, saying that he doubts either will make much difference in the election.
“They simply underline” candidates’ main themes, he said. “For Grimes, it’s that McConnell is out of touch with Kentucky’s needs. For McConnell, it’s that Grimes is an Obama clone who will support the president rather than Kentucky.”
Grimes uses the ad, in which she is pictured firing a shotgun at clay targets, to both criticize President Barack Obama and distance herself from the unpopular president, while at the same time attacking McConnell on his Senate record.
The Grimes ad comes as she faces a withering number of television ads from McConnell and his surrogates trying to convince voters that Grimes, if elected, would simply be a vote for an Obama agenda that many in Kentucky believe would harm them.
The Grimes ad is reminiscent of a 2010 ad for then-West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, who said he would fight Obama’s administration on gun control and the EPA before leveling his rifle and putting a slug through a copy of the so-called “Cap and Trade” bill. The Manchin ad helped him win election to the Senate.
The Grimes ad, which is airing statewide on broadcast television, features the Democratic candidate shooting skeet and talking about Obama and how she disagrees with him. She also references an error in a McConnell television commercial he ran that showed Duke basketball players celebrating following a victory, rather than University of Kentucky players.
“Mitch McConnell wants you to think I’m Barack Obama. Mitch is the same guy who thought Duke basketball players were UK. Or who’s attacking me on coal after doing nothing while we’ve lost thousands of coal jobs. He even said it’s not his job to bring jobs to Kentucky. I’m not Barack Obama. I disagree with him on guns, coal and the EPA.”
The ad then shows McConnell holding a rifle over his head at the National Rifle Association’s convention this year and she says, “And Mitch, that’s not how you hold a gun.”
The McConnell ad uses Grimes’ own words and images lifted from her own ad to turn the tables.
“Alison Grimes thinks shooting a gun will convince you she’s not like Barack Obama,” a narrator says. “But Grimes twice supported Obama’s platform for Obamacare, for the war on coal, for Obama’s foreign policy and, ironically, for gun control. Oh, and you know who also did a publicity stunt firing a gun? Barack Obama.”
McConnell’s campaign then closes the ad by saying as it does in all its recent ads, “Obama needs Grimes. Kentucky needs Mitch McConnell.”
RELATED: Grimes might need campaign reset
RELATED: Grimes pushes back against sagging polls
This isn’t the first time Grimes and McConnell have sparred over guns, but it’s the first time they have done so over the air waves.
Grimes criticized McConnell after his appearance at an NRA event in March when he walked to the lectern brandishing a musket, an award for outgoing Sen. Tom Coburn, over his head. “Someone tell @Team_Mitch that’s not the way to hold a gun. KY women do it better,” Grimes tweeted, along with a photo of herself on a firing range.
She challenged McConnell to come shoot with her on a firing range — a challenge to which he never responded.
McConnell has refused to say if he owns a gun.
“As we have said repeatedly when you’ve asked this question, Sen. McConnell, as a matter of principle, is not interested in helping the left bully people into revealing what protection they may keep in their own homes,” McConnell spokeswoman Allison Moore said in a statement.
Jonathan Hurst, Grimes’ campaign manager, said she came out the better.
“Anytime you have to respond to an opponent’s ad, it’s not a good day,” he said, noting that the campaign believes the McConnell ad is “false.”
“Nobody believes Alison is an Obama Democrat, everyone knows she’s a Clinton Democrat,” he said.
As far as the claims about Grimes supporting Obama’s platform planks, McConnell is relying on a video of Grimes saying that she supports the Democratic platform and other times when she said she backed his presidential campaigns.
The Grimes campaign notes that she never specifically endorsed any of the provisions and in fact, has consistently opposed Obama on them.
But the McConnell camp essentially said that it had won the skirmish, sending out a release quoting several blog posts from media organizations that said McConnell got the upper hand.
“In his latest salvo, however, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has pretty convincingly won the debate,” it quotes a Washington Post Blog as saying.
Source: http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/elections/kentucky/2014/09/16/grimes-mcconnell-shootout-guns/15745183/
A Democrat can say she disagrees with Obama, but unless it’s a real conservative democrat, the kind that might get invited to speak at a Republican Convention, then her words are meaningless. McConnell may be an establishment Republican, but he does have a perfect NRA record, so I’m throwing my support for him.