Oooh, Tierney's attack ad has scary words! And Sarah Palin!

Congressman John Tierney (D, MA-6) is in the reelection fight of his life, partly because his Republican challenger, state senator Richard Tisei, enjoys decent approval ratings and name recognition from his decades-long political career, and partly because people in his family keep ending up in jail.

Tierney's wife spent time in prison for tax fraud, his stepson had a cocaine arrest, and other in-laws are involved in some sort of complicated gambling enterprise that doesn't seem quite done generating bad headlines for the Congressman.

So what's a Congressman to do? Put out an ad to scare the voters, that's what!

I've seen this Tierney ad, "Agenda," on TV several times (I'm in the same media market as his district):



Ooooh! It's got Rush Limbaugh! And Newt Gingrich!

...and OMG SARAH PALIN. 

That's three people who are not running for office anywhere. But they are scary! Scary! Scary!

(Note that Tierney didn't include the actual Republican presidential nominee...the former Massachusetts Governor!)

Then, a list of mean, scary words:

"EXTREME" "SEVERE" "DAMAGING" "OFFENSIVE"

Never mind that this list of words is given without any context whatsoever, only a list of newspapers in which they appeared. We aren't even told the headline of the articles in which the SCARY ALL CAPITAL LETTERS WORDS appeared. (Heck, clicking on random Boston Herald articles online today, I found the words "albatross," "microchip," and "bleeping zebras," all of which are just as irrelevant but would have made a much funnier ad.)

And never mind that Richard Tisei is a moderate Republican (he's pro-choice, and supports gay  marriage), just show that scary photo of SARAH FREAKING PALIN again. 

Sarah Palin: Driving liberals into a foaming-at-the-mouth,
pants-wetting panic, and having fun doing it, since 2008

I guess if I were in Tierney's shoes, desperately trying to get voters to think about anything other than wondering whether he's a criminal like a suspiciously high number of his relatives seem to be, this might seem like a worthwhile strategy.

Unfortunately for Tierney, the Republican Party and several PACs are determined to make sure voters don't forget his problems. The NRCC mockingly used Tierney's ad to open their own ad:



Yeah, notice how this ad uses actual headlines and news clips? Not just SCARY WORDS IN CAPITAL LETTERS? Although, to be fair, the NRCC had so much more to work with. A  state senator who has never been asked to testify about whether he knew about his family's wild gambling operation just isn't going to inspire as many interesting headlines. Sad but true. ;)

All sarcasm aside, Tierney needs to be man enough to run on his record, instead of insulting the voters' intelligence with ridiculous ads completely devoid of substance.