Monday, 28 April 2008
Fischer Goes On Attack
« Beshear: Rooting Out Republicans From State Government | Main | Chandler Blunders By Endorsing Obama »Fischer's team has decided to hold nothing back and go after Lunsford's throat on their first attack advertisement.
I don't think this ad is out of bounds at all. I know a number of people who worked for Vencor and few had anything nice to say about Lunsford. Lunsford accumulated a lot of wealth while running a business into the ground. There were many people, both patients and employees that were left hurting by his company. His shady dealings as CEO of Vencor are certainly fair game in a campaign.
Whether Democrats want to admit it or not, Lunsford does carry a lot of baggage. Baggage that will be unveiled in much greater detail if he ever gets within 10 points of McConnell this fall. Although I doubt the race will get that close, the fact of the matter is Lunsford is unelectable. If the Democrats want to be competitive they should nominate someone else in the primary.
I believe that is the point that Fischer is trying to make with this ad and the release of his new site TheLunsfordCollection.com. Unfortunately for Fischer, he hasn't made the case that he should be that person.
First, he doesn't have the positive name recognition to successfully pull off this type of attack. Negative ads will bring an opponents positives down in the polls. One of the side effects to attack ads is the lowering of ones own positives. A good negative attack will lower your opponents more than your own. Normally, one must have fairly high positives before undertaking a good attack campaign. Unfortunately for Fischer he barely registers in the polls. All these ads are going to do is depress voting in the race and not propel him to victory.
Secondly, his campaign has been a show of embarrassing incompetency. The fact that his attack ad breaks the campaign breaks FEC laws is incomprehensible. How can a campaign for the U.S. Senate know so little of the campaign laws?
All you have to do is read Democratic stalwarts at Page One Kentucky to get an almost daily stream of stupid things Fischer's campaign has done. Not exactly the type of campaign that instills a lot of confidence in anyone.
