Tommy Inc. Trading Work for Well-Financed Lies

We recently learned just how little campaigning Tommy Thompson has done since winning the Republican primary.  Last week I openly wondered if it was due to him feeling entitled, being lazy or just outsourcing his campaign to the same special interests that made him rich in Washington D.C.  After seeing the latest ads released by Tommy Inc. it seems that they plan on trading in hard work on the campaign tail for well-financed already debunked lies.

Perhaps we should have better anticipated this "strategy" the minute that Darrin Schmitz entered Tommy's campaign. After all he was an operative for shameless liar Michael Gableman and for the fact-free campaign of Ron Johnson.

In any case, last week Tommy absolutely confirmed that he would have no regard for the truth when he released his attack ad. At the outset the ad lies about something that was totally debunked a full two years ago. He claims that the Affordable Care Act was a "government takeover" of the healthcare system.  This notorious lie was so widely panned that it was declared the "lie of the year" for 2010.  What other 2010 relic is Tommy going to dig up for his next ad? The wildly paranoid "death panel" lie perhaps?

Tommy's special interest friends at the Chamber of Commerce cranked out a new ad last week and it rivaled  Tommy's in terms of dishonesty. The big lie in that ad is the fiction that health care reform cut benefits from Medicare.

Directly contrary to the Commerce ad, the AARP found that the Affordable Care Act “strengthens Medicare by protecting and improving your guaranteed benefits and cracking down on waste, fraud and inefficiency."   If you don't like the AARP then look at the fact checking on the same subject from the Washington Post.  Likewise FactCheck.org has repeatedly pointed out how misleading similar attacks have been in the past.  Similar to Tommy's dishonest ad, the big lie from the Chamber has been repeatedly exposed since 2010.  Yet they just continue spending their special interest money shamelessly saying it over an over.

All of these actions tell me that Tommy is not concerning himself with doing the actual hard work that goes into a normal statewide campaign.  It tells me that he would rather outsource his campaign to special interest allies and flood the airwaves with long-debunked but well-financed lies.