Another election campaign, and once again the political marketers are portraying Ron Johnson as your favorite uncle, a simple Wisconsin man looking out for the best interests of the state’s people.
He has called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” and expressed support for changing its permanent funding to annual budgetary consideration, risking the entire pension program to the ever-changing whims of politicians.
The truth, of course, is that Johnson has spent the last 12 years in Washington as a national embarrassment, and if the Democrats fail to get that message across, he’ll spend another six years in the nation’s capital sucking up to Donald Trump and acting like Joe McCarthy reincarnated.
Johnson’s campaign and the special interests backing him have hammered home a message that completely ignores what the Oshkosh Republican actually stands for, but paints his opponent, Mandela Barnes, as some sort of dangerous Black guy who would unleash rapists and other criminals on the good people of Wisconsin.
Never mind that one U.S. senator has no role in such matters. The polls indicate that the negative scenario is having an effect, especially on independent voters.
Particularly egregious are the ads being sponsored by the National Republican Senatorial Committee that many observers liken to the infamous Willie Horton ads that helped George H.W. Bush get elected in 1988.
The $1.2 million online and television attack ad against Barnes exploits the awful scene of a car plowing into a…
