Colorado Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jane Norton is running a new TV ad that is extra-heavy on talking points, even for Norton, who has struggled on the stump to speak on the issues in language that doesn’t sound like mere sound bites. But, as the ad makes clear, she is committed to her soundbites, even the ones with which she disagrees.
When Norton has gone off script, she has made news for wading into reaching, even conspiratorial, terrain. Last fall, she said that President Obama cared more about the legal rights of terrorists than he did about the lives of Americans, for instance.
This latest ad is focused entirely on Obama and is loaded with sloganeering that will mostly not translate to policy. Even she has admitted that “repealing Obamacare, yanking it out by the roots,” as she dramatically puts it, is not possible before Obama is out of office.
“Realistically, I don’t think you can repeal [Obamacare] with the makeup we’re seeing right now [in the White House and Congress],” she told conservative radio host Ross Kaminsky weeks ago. “Even if we were able to put in place conservatives in all the seats, you wouldn’t be able to repeal it…”
But in the new ad, Norton is all steely determination. “We can’t wait for 2012 to stop Obama,” she says.
Norton has made it onto the GOP primary ballot, her petition signatures accepted by the Secretary of State Wednesday. So now she is officially joined in a heated battle for the summer months with Weld County DA Ken Buck. This sloganeering ad– “our republic is in jeopardy”– may win her primary votes but it could come back to haunt her in the general election. Video now lasts forever– or at least a full election cycle or two.
[Hat tip to Colorado Pols]
