Steve Kagen has done it again. Admittedly, it’s hard to top his previous record for a flip-flop.
Earlier this month, Kagen was for a bill on Monday and against it on Tuesday. That’s a 48-hour flip-flop.
Here, however, we have a 30-second flip-flop. In one breath, Kagen’s new tv ad rails against John Gard’s “negative campaign,” calling it “one of the most negative campaigns in America.” It classifies his 2008 “World Tour” ad as “negative,” although it is not – it is nothing more than a straight contrast on how Gard would vote differently than Kagen. No negative personal attacks, no grainy images or cartoonish caricatures.

Then, having decried how terrible awful nasty bad it is to engage in negative campaigning, the Kagen ad then launches into a negative attack on John Gard. Not a contrast between Kagen and Gard on a policy issue, but a negative attack. The ad accuses John Gard of “hiding that he’s the oil companies’ candidate” and then digs back to a vote Gard cast to increase the gas tax 13 years ago! The ad shows a laughable cartoon Gard, with a cowboy hat, a pipe, big dollar signs, a fist-full of cash, a gas-guzzling truck and some drilling equipment.

Kagen has been acting like it’s Amateur Hour since he won the primary two years ago. This is just more of the same: decrying negative campaigning in the ad’s first ten seconds, and then practicing it in the next ten seconds. It’s embarrassing.

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7 Responses to “Fitting Hypocrisy into 30 seconds”

  1. I particularly like the one where he’s driving around his district…without his seatbelt on.

    Just hit TV today.

  2. John says:

    Kevin, Kevin, Kevin… Get your talking points together before commenting:

    http://blogs.jsonline.com/allp.....x#comments

  3. wally says:

    Trust “Kevin-the-Hack” to take at face value whatever “Talking Points” are put before him. Congratulations, Kevin, you have stepped in it once again.

  4. Guys, I’ve had my brother and two family friends in law enforcement look at the ad. None of them can find a seatbelt.

    If there’s a screen grab as the JS and the Kagen campaign suggests, where is it? I’d be more than willing to be proven wrong with physical evidence.

    By the way, wasn’t it I who said the first negative ads this time were going to come from Kagen? Could have sworn I said so…

  5. John says:

    I know you don’t live in Wisconsin anymore Kevin, but the Gard ads I saw a couple months ago were pretty nasty and false. He is still peddling that Cuba is drilling off our coast story even after it has been proving false.

  6. SPET3R says:

    Democrats love painting Republicans as the Oil Party. Meanwhile they have no leadership on energy themself.

  7. [...] During Rep. Kagen’s campaign against John Card during the last election cycle he declares that he will run a clean campaign focused on the issues.  Later, during the campaign, he declares an ad by John Gard (which offered nothing more than how John would have voted had he been in office) a negative attack and launches a mini-campaign against him.  (Read more here). [...]

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