June 24, 2010 10:12 PM UTC

Vets to Norton: Take Down 9/11 Ad

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• by: Colorado Pols

From Huffington Post Denver:

On Tuesday, thirty-one military veterans signed a petition for the campaign to remove the ad, which they argue is rife with “extreme, untrue and dangerous rhetoric.”

In a recent HuffPost article, Jonny Karpuk, a West Point graduate and veteran of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, reamed Norton for falling back on the stale “liberals can’t do security” argument. Karpuk particularly singles out Norton’s endorsement of the Bush administration’s foreign policy–policies which, he argues, are responsible for precisely the failures highlighted in Norton’s ad.

Commenting on the negative response from veterans, Norton campaign spokeswoman Cinamon Watson told the Denver Post, “The liberals in Washington want to sweep the threat under the rug, rename it, pretend it’s in a far away place. Jane Norton won’t let that happen. The advertisement is not coming down.”

We don’t really think it matters at this point if she ‘takes it down’ or not: she’s completely invested in its defense. But the overwhelming majority of people who have seen this web ad are not friendly to Norton–spanning the political spectrum, based on the different locations our copy above has been republished–and view it as a crass manipulation of history for votes she probably won’t get anyway. She won’t peel away any Ken Buck voters with this, as they’re pretty well inoculated against Norton on a personal level; a consequence of the shrill turn her campaign has taken. Fact is it’s a really hard place to launch any message from, far down in the polls and clawing for relevance, let alone one you intend to be shocking and controversial. When people already prejudge you as flailing, going totally overboard in response…only makes you appear more so.

And yes, it’s still the one of most disgusting pieces of fear mongering trash we’ve ever seen.