Most Americans probably understand that politics can be an ugly business. As long as there have been campaigns, there have been candidates and parties trying to appeal to voters’ worst instincts by aiming for the gutter.

But once in a while, a campaign ad comes along that manages to disgust a wide variety of decent people, regardless of party or ideology. MS NOW reported:

In a new, unaired attack ad against Amy Acton, the Democrat running for governor of Ohio, her estranged mother speaks directly to the camera to accuse her of lying about her past.

“Don’t vote for people who lie,” says Donna Arthur — who married a man whom Acton accused of sexually abusing her as a child — in the video.

The campaign team for Vivek Ramaswamy, Acton’s Republican rival, confirmed to The Associated Press that it produced the ad and plans to spend $4 million airing it, apparently indifferent to the condemnations.

“It’s not surprising that Vivek Ramaswamy has stooped to such a despicable low as to attempt to turn the sexual abuse Amy endured at 12 years old from our birth mother’s husband into a political talking point,” Acton’s brother, Philip Stearns, said in a statement.

“After he was arrested and Amy and I were removed from their custody, our birth mother stayed married to Amy’s rapist until he died,” Stearns added. “This desperate, disgusting attack reveals exactly who Vivek Ramaswamy is at his core — a pathetic excuse for a man who is willing to hurt anyone as long as it gets him what he wants.”

Plenty of Republicans also slammed the vile attack, including former GOP presidential contender Nikki Haley, who said via social media that Ramaswamy is “a bad guy.”

One day later, however, JD Vance traveled to Ohio, in large part in the hopes of boosting Ramaswamy, who’s trailed Acton in several recent statewide polls, with time running out in the election cycle. Any chance the vice president might take the high road on the year’s most offensive attack ad?

Evidently not.

On Wednesday morning, Vance, himself an Ohio Republican, initially said the propriety of the ad (or lack thereof) was “not really my concern.” But he didn’t stop there.

“I have to admit that I’m a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America,” the vice president said.

In other words, Vance isn’t disgusted by the ad, which features a woman who sided with her alleged rapist husband over her own daughter, whom she calls a “liar”; Vance is disgusted by Republicans who have a problem with that ad.

Soon after, the vice president headlined a rally and went even further, insisting that the commercial “calls it out like it is.” Vance went on to accuse Acton of somehow controlling independent news organizations, adding that Ramaswamy has never complained about any of the criticisms he’s faced — which might be credible if anyone had ever targeted the GOP nominee with an ad this abhorrent.

We’ll see soon enough whether the commercial ends up backfiring on Ramaswamy, who almost certainly wouldn’t have pursued such an attack if he thought he was likely to win the gubernatorial race. But in the meantime, Vance just faced a test of his personal character, and he flunked.

The post JD Vance is ‘disgusted,’ not by Ramaswamy’s vile ad but by its bipartisan critics appeared first on MS NOW.

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From MS Now.