GOP Hammers Democrats on Obamacare, Spending, and Immigration
Anti-Obamacare ads are dominating the airwaves in the election’s stretch run. According to Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, Republicans ran nearly 13,000 anti-Obamacare ads in Senate races during the week of October 20-26. That’s after they ran nearly 12,000 anti-Obamacare ads during the week of October 13-19 and over 11,000 during the week of October 6-12. In each of those three weeks, Republicans ran far more ads against Obamacare than they — or the Democrats — ran on any other issue.
Judging by both parties’ ads in Senate races from October 20-26, the issues favoring Republicans the most seem to be #1 Obamacare, #2 spending, and #3 immigration. Over that span, Republicans ran nearly 13,000 more anti-Obamacare ads than Democrats did (although Democrats did run a few). In addition, Republicans ran nearly 10,000 more ads on budget/government spending and nearly 5,000 more on immigration. (Meanwhile, the Democrats ran over 7,000 more ads on social issues, nearly 7,000 more ads on taxes, and over 5,000 more on Social Security.)
Given this emphasis, if Republicans take the Senate, it would be hard for objective observers not to view the result as a repudiation of the Democrats on immigration, spending, and — most of all — Obamacare. Such a result would be quite interesting, in light of previous proclamations. Just this spring, even as conservatives were working to repeal and replace Obamacare with a conservative alternative, President Obama haughtily decreed that “the debate over repealing this law is over.” And in the wake of the 2012 election, an army of mainstream pundits and Republican consultants declared that the immigration issue would doom Republicans until they dutifully hopped aboard the amnesty train.
But neither Obamacare nor amnesty is good for Main Street America, and Main Street Americans get to vote—even if the New York Times’s opinion pages wish it were otherwise.
© 2014 Weekly Standard LLC. Reprinted with permission.