June 10, 2016 02:30 PM UTC

Another Early GOP Ad Full of Bull

• 3 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

As the Fort Collins Coloradoan’s Nick Coltrain reports:

The first ad produced in the race for Larimer County’s Congressional seat takes some liberties in explaining incumbent Jared Polis’ positions and wealth.

Nic Morse, a Fort Collins Republican hoping to head to Washington next year, posted a 30-second spot on YouTube earlier this month that characterizes the Democrat House District 2 representative as a “disconnected billionaire” who wants to raise workers’ payroll taxes to pay for single-payer health care, insinuating that Polis supports a state constitutional amendment to that effect.

Problem is, while Polis routinely ranks among the wealthiest members of Congress, he’s not a billionaire. Nor has he advocated for ColoradoCare, the name for the proposed Amendment 69 to create single-payer health care in the state…

Although it might be tough to tell from our lowly middle-class vantage point, there is indeed a difference between a “millionaire” and a “billionaire”–most importantly that a “billionaire” needs to have assets of, well, at least one thousand million dollars. Otherwise they’re a millionaire, like Rep. Jared Polis.

It’s also a fact that Polis does not support Amendment 69, the ColoradoCare single-payer health care proposal headed for the ballot this November. In fact Polis disavowed the initiative last February, which right-wing advocacy group Advancing Colorado gleefully noted for the record at the time.

So what gives? Like the ad from U.S. Senate candidate Jon Keyser that claims Michael Bennet and Barack Obama are “all for” Iran developing nuclear weapons, this is an ad whose central claims are flat-out wrong. Not a question of interpretation, but just simple BS that takes seconds to prove. In both cases we believe the choice to tell outrageous falsehoods in the ads is deliberate–intended to spark discussion about the candidate and raise their name ID regardless of whether the press they’re getting is good or bad.

It’s lowlife politics for sure, but if you’re already a long shot candidate there seems to be little downside.

And that’s a real shame.