Mark Kirk has a new radio ad out today, titled “Singled Out,” which was also the name of a 1990s MTV dating show. It’s unclear what the link is with the Illinois Senate campaign, unless it’s that Kirk himself recently became single again.
In the ad, Kirk boasts about his reputation for fiscal conservatism, while portraying his opponent, Alexi Giannoulias, as a big taxing, big spending … he never actually says the word, but it’s clear that Kirk is trying to imply that Giannoulias is a Democrat.
Kirk doesn’t exaggerate his own accomplishments (for once), but he’s misleading about Giannoulias’s positions (for the dozenth time), so we rate this ad “Kinda Truthish.”
Kirk starts out by bragging, “I’m a fiscal conservative who’s known as a budget hawk on spending. I worked to stop the infamous Bridge to Nowhere,” a reference to a $320 million bridge that would have served an island of 50 people in Alaska. As a member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Kirk introduced an amendment to kill the bridge’s funding.
However, as Fox News pointed out, before Kirk became a budget hawk, he “secured more than $30 million for 19 pet projects in and around his congressional district,” including the Adler Planetarium, whose board members donated $23,000 to his campaigns.
“Soon, you’ll be hearing more about my specific plans to help the economy and create jobs here in Illinois,” says Kirk, who won the nomination seven-and-a-half months ago, perhaps not enough time to develop an economic platform. How soon? Not in the next 30 seconds of this one-minute ad. He devotes that time to attacking Giannoulias.
Chicago Politics
“Amazingly, my opponent has a different approach,” Kirk says. “He supports higher state and federal income taxes, and he believes if the government borrows and spends more money, it will somehow create jobs.”
Giannoulias has said he supports raising Illinois’s income tax only if the increase is coupled with property tax relief. And he favors ending the Bush tax cuts for Americans earning over $250,000.
“I think we need to let taxes for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans to expire,” Giannoulias told the Sun-Times editorial board during an interview this morning. “If we could afford it, of course. But you can’t talk responsibility about debts and deficits and talk about [giving up] $700 billion.”
As for the government borrowing and spending more money to create jobs, Kirk voted against President Obama’s $75 billion stimulus package. Giannoulias supported the package, but of course, Giannoulias would agree with Obama if the president wanted to change our official language to Swedish and require all Americans to wear their underwear outside their clothes.
I’m Ted McClelland, and I approved this blog post.
