Will Negative GOP Attack Ads in Congressional Races Backfire?

[MineralMan]

I'm beginning to think so. Here in Minnesota, there are three districts that are potential flips. Various GOP PACs and the RNCC are blasting the area with really vile attack ads against the Democratic candidates. The ads are full of lies, exaggerations, and half-truths. One even attacks the Democrat for being a veteran for pity's sake. The ads are universally visually ugly, and use the worst sort of marketing techniques.

So, the local TV stations and other media outlets are fact-checking those ads and reporting that they are incorrect, misleading and ugly. Meanwhile the Democratic candidates are running an equal number of positive ads that show the candidate being friendly, helpful, and thoughtful.

I think the GOP's strategy is going to backfire, at least in Minnesota. We'll find out soon.

[SWBTATTReg]

1. I hope so and I'm glad to hear that the ads are being fact checked. Josh Hawley in MO (...

against Claire McCaskill) has accused her of all kinds of stuff, untrue. None of the stations have run fact checking against the ads (that I know of), but golden boy Josh H has lied through (or his surrogates have) through his teeth. Some of the lies are truly mind boggling.

[Pope George Ringo II]

2. My gut says it will work for them as well as anything would.

They were never going to reach patriots and generally sane people anyway. The indifferent middle gets disgusted by the mudslinging and tunes out politics even more. And it fires up their base to go vote against the evil baby-killing liberals and stick it to the evil liberal media with those evil dishonest polls. It may not necessarily work in an absolute sense, but I would be surprised if it really backfired.

And it's not like they really have a better option. What were they doing to do? Run on their record?