Negative Ads, Lies Key For GOP against Jason Carter

Candidate for Gov. Jason Carter

Negative campaigning is hardly new, and already the Republican Governors Association in association with Nathan Deal are already running a misleading ad against challenger Jason Carter as Deal'a approval rating has dipped way below 50% and polling shows Carter either neck & neck or with a slight lead over the incumbent. Mudslinging is crucial to the Republican plan for this year's midterm elections, because the party's hold on the governor's mansion power will hinge on shifting attention from the state's educational system, cuts to the Hope Scholarship, Jobs and Medicaid and other state issues that cut against him. And let's not forget about the Ethics problem that continue to haunt Deal since he left congress 4 years ago.

When people are looking at issues that are affecting Georgia and that are not breaking the way favorably for Deal & Co, what you want to do is focus on your opponent and that's what the latest RGA ad does against Carter, accusing him of supporting to expand Obamacare, where in fact he supports expanding medicaid. They took his support of expanding medicaid and twist it in a attempt to say he support expanding Obamacare. It's a tough tactic, one they hope will drive up Carter's negatives among Georgia voters especially among white swing voters.

Their strategy from now up to November is to define Carter immediately and unrelentingly. The strategy rests on the widely held belief that negative political ads make more of an impression on voters than positive one. Voters are in some ways more ready to accept the negative about politicians than the positive and they often say they would like to see a more reasoned debate in campaigns and more talk about the ideas, but in fact they often respond to negative ads because they tend to find them more credible.

So the question now for the Carter campaign is how to respond to a attack ad that takes his support of medicaid as a interpretation that he supports Obamacare, which are entirely two different things.