An Interesting Ad

I saw an interesting political campaign ad over the weekend. It was targeted against Robert McDonnell, the Republican candidate for Virginia Attorney General, whose own ads I had already seen (and which, like this one, didn't openly identify his partisan affiliation).

Anyway, the ad reported that McDonnell was a graduate of Pat Roberton's Regent University, that Robertson had donated to McDonnell's campaign, and that McDonnell was opposed to, among other things, stem cell research (he's also, apparently, and not surprisingly, quite the homophobe).

Anyway, the ad interested me because it was the first ad I can recall seeing in a long time that openly took on the Republicans' achiles heel: the radical religious right.

Now, granted, I suspect this ad was restricted to the northern VA suburbs, and not playing down south, where Robertson, and his buddy, Jerry Falwell, are more revered.

And I don't enough about the Democratic candidate for Attorney General, Creigh Deeds', to know whether this is an act of desperation, a throw-away tactic for northern VA and not part of a broader strategy, or something else.

Regardless, it's an important step for Democratic aspirants to make. Not all Republicans can be tied to Pat Robertson so directly, but Democrats can raise the issues this ad is raising, such as stem cell research, and turn the infamous problem of wedge issues against Republicans for a change.

I'd also like to see this tactic used to raise the profile of issues like the right to privacy, and the separation of church and state, which are not only critically important issues to our society as the politics of supreme court nominations make abundantly clear, but also from a practical standpoint in that I think the radically conservative position on these issues is not the popular one.