February 14, 2009 01:10 AM UTC

NRCC Attacks Dems On Stimulus

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• by: Colorado Pols

From the Colorado Independent:

The National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) is finally putting its money where its mouth has been. A round of radio ads targeting 30 Democrats in conservative or swing districts began airing Friday – among the targets were freshman Rep. Betsy Markey and third-term Rep. John Salazar of Colorado – who plan to vote in favor of the $790 billion economic stimulus package.

The 60-second radio ads blast Markey and Salazar “for supporting a trillion-dollar spending bill chock full of wasteful Washington spending instead of working across the aisle to create real jobs for struggling middle-class families,” according to an NRCC release. Both ads say the Democrats promised to be frugal – quoting a newspaper column by Salazar and Markey campaign ads – and then list what has become a standard Republican litany: that the bill is “packed with pork: $75 million for smoking cessation, $50 million for the National Endowment of the Arts, $335 million to treat sexually transmitted diseases, and $600 million for government employees’ vehicles.”

Listen to the Salazar ad here and the Markey ad here. Both ads are scheduled to run for one week, a spokesman for the NRCC said. He declined to say how much the NRCC is spending on the campaign…

Markey and Salazar are also the only Colorado Democrats representing districts carried – if only by a few points – by John McCain in the 2008 election. Matthew Reichbach finds some common traits among targeted Democrats – they all hail from congressional districts that have been friendly to Republicans in recent years…

Make no mistake: the small markets being targeted are not costly, which is a good thing given that the NRCC is by all accounts next to broke. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is hammering away in swing Republican districts over the stimulus, too, so it’s not like this is a one-sided event–okay, maybe a little given the disproportionate amount of money available to the DCCC right now. But you have to ask yourself, do they really need to start campaigning one month into a 24-month term?