“Romney Killed This Guy’s Wife”
2012 Election, Lies, Political Ads, Priorities USA Action
Priorities USA Action, an independent expenditure PAC, with roughly $21 million dollars to spend provided by Dreamworks, a bunch of unions, some law firms, McKinsey (!), and a number of liberal-owned companies, produced the hardest-hitting ad directed at Mitt Romney so far.
The attack ad says:
“When Mitt Romney and Bain shut down the plant, I lost my health care. A short time after that, my wife became ill. I don’t know how long she was sick. . . . I took her to the Jackson County hospital, and admitted her for pneumonia, and that’s when they found the cancer. By then it was stage four. . . . She passed away in 22 days.”
AllahPundit responded:
Romney stopped doing work for Bain in 1999; the steel plant in question here closed down in 2001; Soptic’s wife passed away in 2006; and yet, Romney’s somehow culpable. Perfection. You know what’s really interesting about this spot? It’s not even a health-care ad. It’d be sleazy under any circumstances, but there’d at least be a concrete policy angle if Burton was selling it as an argument for, say, single-payer, to decouple insurance from employment. He’s not. There appears to be no actual policy argument here at all, unless The One now opposes layoffs on principle, for fear that someone somewhere might be left without insurance. Is that where our very pro-business president — seriously, just ask him — is now at? As John Sexton says, does this mean O himself is on the hook until 2014 for any deaths that resulted from GM dealerships being closed in 2009? I thought workers bore some responsibility to find a new job with insurance after they’re laid off, but if he wants to take the blame for human tragedies at Government Motors, fine by me.
Even CNN describes the ad as “not accurate.”
