The American Spectator blog and RedState recently reported that WPGH-TV, the Pittsburgh affiliate of Sinclair Broadcasting, just suspended the DCCC’s latest attack ad against Tim Burns that falsely claims he supports a national 23% sales tax and shipping jobs overseas.
The DCCC and Mark Critz have repeatedly tried to misrepresent Burns’ position on taxes. Burns signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge early on in his campaign, which commits the signer to “oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses … and oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.” Critz has yet to make any such promise to the voters of Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District. In fact, Critz was asked bluntly during a recent debate whether he would raise taxes and his response left the door wide open for tax hikes. Watch the YouTube video here.
Kent Gates, a Burns campaign spokesman, remarked on the decision to pull the ad:
Mark Critz and his Pelosi backed attack machine have been lying about Tim Burns’ positions throughout this campaign. The non-partisan FactCheck.org has already called Critz’s smears ‘false’ and now they are caught again falsely claiming Tim Burns supports a 23% national sales tax. Mark Critz even apologized at one point for these lies. So if he really is sorry, Critz should stop the smears and call on his Washington based backers to do the same.
Last month, the DCCC tried to make similar claims against HI-01 candidate Charles Djou. FactCheck.org came out so strongly against these ads that they wrote, “For Democrats, misrepresenting an opponent’s anti-tax position as an anti-jobs position is getting to be a bad habit.”
I think that explains just how desperate they are to run away from their record on the economy.