Why do Democrats keep attacking their opponents’ military record?
1. Yesterday, The Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee attacked GOP candidate Lee Zeldin (NY-1) for being a “coward.” Zeldin is a member of the Army Reserves and was “a paratrooper with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, where he served in Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Piling on the insults, a DCCC spokesman tweeted a picture of Zeldin’s face photo-shopped onto the Wizard Of Oz’s Cowardly Lion:
2. In Arkansas, Senate Candidate Tom Cotton was accused by Democrat Senator Mark Pryor of having a “sense of entitlement” from his years of military service:
3. Democrat House hopeful Erin Bilbray (NV-3) called Rep. Joe Heck, an Army Reservist who served in Iraq, “un-American.” Yeah. Really.
4. In Alaska, a DC-funded pro-Mark Begich Super PAC attacked Begich’s opponent, Dan Sullivan, for working out-of-state. But Sullivan was “serving in the White House from 2002-04 and the State Department from 2006-09.”
5. There’s even some Democrat-on-Democrat attacks in the Maryland Gubernatorial race, with Dem AG Mark Gansler saying his primary opponent Anthony Brown didn’t have a “real job” when he was serving in the Army:
Gansler: “I’m running against somebody who has never managed anybody, never run anything, his ads are about how he’s a lawyer in Iraq, and that’s all fine and good but this is a real job.”
It’s unusual for any politician to attack their opponent’s service to their country, but to have this kind of pattern emerge in Democrat attacks this cycle is deeply disturbing.