October 22, 2018 12:49 PM UTC

Silliest Ad Yet Hits CD-3 Race

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• by: Colorado Pols

ThinkProgress—check this one out:

Fourth-term Republican Rep. Scott Tipton, facing a tough re-election in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, has launched a new broadside against his Democratic opponent Diane Mitsch Bush — falsely accusing her of socialism because she once subscribed to a non-profit magazine that was originally founded by a socialist historian.

Though she is not a socialist, in an attack ad posted on Wednesday, Tipton first warns that the Democratic Socialists of America (an organization with which Mitsch Bush has no affiliation) “openly propose to do away with capitalism” — which is sort of the point of socialism. The narrator then claims that Diane Mitsch Bush “helped fund a leading socialist magazine.” In text on the screen, the ad cites three issues of the award-winning monthly magazine In These Times — a progressive publication that has not identified as an “Independent Socialist Newspaper” since 1989…

For those unfamiliar, the magazine In These Times was started over 40 years ago as a fairly unapologetic lefty magazine–for a time even adopting the tagline “The Socialist Newsweekly.” Since that time, though, the magazine has evolved into a more mainstream source of still unapologetically progressive news and commentary, and is particularly popular among labor unions.

A spokesperson for the Mitsch Bush campaign told ThinkProgress that she was a subscriber and believes she made an “insignificant” small additional contribution to support the publication. The campaign also provided a list of other publications she has “helped fund” by subscribing, including Time, Newsweek, Ms., The Nation, the High Country News, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Colorado Politics, and the Denver Post.

That’s right, folks. This is an attack ad entirely based on a magazine subscription. Like most nonprofit or modestly for-profit publications, it’s no surprise that In These Times solicits subscribers for additional donations in support of their work–just like Colorado Public Radio or any charity does. But even that doesn’t make Rep. Diane Mitsch Bush anything more than a subscriber to a magazine, and on the basis of that magazine subscription voters are supposed to believe she is some kind of anti-‘Merican saboteur? By this logic, every Money subscriber is Bernie Madoff and every Playboy subscriber is a pervert. It’s completely ridiculous.

And above all, it shows Rep. Scott Tipton doesn’t have anything to use on Diane Mitsch Bush.