Democrats embrace the politics of fraud in Arkansas senate race

Fred Barnes:

"Tom Cotton voted against preparing America for pandemics like Ebola,” a TV ad in Arkansas declared last week. The ad came from Democrat Mark Pryor, who is running for reelection to the Senate. Cotton, a House member, is his Republican opponent in the November 4 election. The ad failed to mention that after voting against an early version of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Reauthorization Act, Cotton voted for the bill once a provision he objected to was removed.

Last spring, Senate majority leader Harry Reid’s PAC said in an ad: “Before Congress, Cotton got paid handsomely working for insurance companies.” The claim was untrue, as was the ad’s insistence that Cotton “wants to end Medicare’s guarantee, giving billions in profits to insurance companies.” The Washington Post’s fact checker gave the ad “four Pinocchios,” calling it “as phony as a three-dollar bill.”

In June, a 30-second ad by the Arkansas Democratic party said Cotton opposes disaster relief. It featured a scene of damage caused by tornadoes in Arkansas on April 27, insinuating that Cotton was against aiding the victims. He wasn’t. His votes were against the pork-laden bills after Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast in 2012.

In August, the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee aired a TV spot accusing Cotton of having voted against federal funding for Arkansas Children’s Hospital. But Cotton’s opposition to the legislation didn’t cost the hospital any funding. On the contrary, he voted in favor of funding the two agencies that do aid the hospital.

By now, you should have gotten the drift: Democrats are going to extreme lengths to protect Pryor and demonize Cotton, his Republican challenger. And they’re taking nearly as combative an approach to defend Democratic incumbents in three other red states—North Carolina, Louisiana, and Alaska.

But there’s a special intensity to the attacks on Cotton, along with a glaring disregard for the truth. This is probably because Pryor, 51, has been viewed as the most vulnerable of the four incumbents.
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Democrats who will do and say anything to hold onto power deserve to be defeated.  They also deserve to be defeated because they have been wrong on the issues that are important to voters.  Pryor's support of control freak government should be a disqualifier.  His support of Harry /Reid is a definite disqualifier.  Arkansas should reject the Democrats' politics of fraud.