DCCC Targets Lance for the first time

by: Rosi Efthim

Mon Feb 02, 2009 at 11:50:35 AM EST

Radio ads targeting 28 Republican congressmen - including freshman Leonard Lance - hit the airwaves tomorrow morning, courtesy of Rep. Chris Van Hollen and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The ads call out some of vulnerable representatives who voted against President Obama's economic recovery plan, which got zero votes from House Republicans but passed anyway - 244 to 188. Credit the House's Democratic majority for that.

Lance's vote - siding with his party in a big, splashy show of unity against more responsible efforts to solve the country's problems - could absolutely have been predicted. And it's a damned shame that the same DCCC didn't see that coming and help Linda Stender drive the point home that Lance was likely to vote with the GOP against forward movement, which he now has. But I digress...

The published text of the ads is rough stuff, calling out the congressmen by name on stations that serve their Districts, and accusing each of prioritizing things DCCC thinks will resonate with voters, over needed components in the economic recovery plan.  Choosing to bail out banks but opposing tax breaks for the bulk of American voters. Backing expenditures for new schools in Iraq, but failing to support the plan's spending on schools at home. Benefitting themselves from healthcare at taxpayers' expense, while children go uninsured. The ad targetting Lance and 9 of his colleagues is about job creation:

Did you know Congressman [Leonard Lance] voted against economic recovery to immediately create and save over [insert number here] [New Jersey] jobs? Times are tough, tell [Leonard Lance] to put families before politics.

Debate on the plan begins today in the Senate. And some Republican there will also feel the heat soon, as television ads sponsored by MoveOn and SEIU pressuring five swing-state senators hit the airwaves. Bloviator-in-Chief Rush Limbaugh is fodder for ads coming from Americans United for Change asking whether senators in swing-states Nevada, Pennsylvania and Ohio will be "Dittoheads" and side with Limbaugh, who has been blistering Obama's plan on his radio show.