Senate hopeful J.D. Hayworth's latest TV ad has given the John McCain campaign an opportunity to re-package the old "wrestling match with a pig" analogy. As the saying goes, getting into one is a bad idea because "you both get dirty and the pig likes it."
The McCain campaign would argue that Hayworth likes it a lot, which is why he's running "false" TV ads.
Check out Hayworth's new ad after the jump.
"With his latest TV ad, Congressman Hayworth shows all of Arizona how much he enjoys rolling around in the mud and muck of blatantly false character attacks," says McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers. "Even Congressman Hayworth's fellow infomercial pitchmen would be disappointed with his utter disregard for the truth.
"Every single assertion in Congressman Hayworth's new ad has already been labeled false by the respected non-partisan fact-checkers at FactCheck.org."
Factcheck.org had the following to say about Hayworth's assertion that McCain's immigration plan would have given social security and medicare benefits to those in the country illegally.
"Hayworth falsely claims McCain's bill would have given Social Security and Medicare benefits to illegal immigrants. It's false to say 'illegal aliens' would get benefits. They wouldn't be eligible for Social Security and Medicare until they became legal and worked and paid taxes, just like everybody else."The fact-finding Web site went on to debunk Hayworth's claim that McCain opposes a border fence.
"It's simply false to say McCain 'opposed the border fence' based on a single vote. McCain did vote against an amendment to the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act of 2007 that would have allocated an additional $1.8 billion to constructHayworth's poll numbers are in the tank (check it out here), so we don't really blame him (we didn't expect Hayworth to act in any way dignified) for the somewhat-misleading ad. Desperate times, man.
double-layered fencing and vehicle barriers along the southwest border. However, that amendment failed overwhelmingly: Half of the Republicans (including Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky) and all but two Democrats voted against it. Why was the amendment defeated? There was a trade-off involved that many senators were not willing to make. Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, chairman at the time
of the subcommittee that wrote the Homeland Security spending bill, told the Associated Press border-patrol agents and 1,200 new detention beds for illegal immigrants, for example. '[T]he real issue here is the offset that's being used, and the offset creates a Hobson's choice for almost everyone here,' Judd told the AP."that the amendment
would have resulted in across-the-board cuts in Homeland Security's budget. Judd told the AP that would have meant cutting 750 new border-patrol agents and 1,200 new detention beds for illegal immigrants, for example.