Trey Grayson On The March

For months on end republicans across Kentucky wondered why Trey Grayson was sitting back and letting Rand Paul get all of the attention.  In December I suggested that Grayson was playing a bit of rope-a-dope and letting Paul punch himself out.  Now it seems that Grayson has decided to step up and deliver some blows of his own.

Over the next few days the news will become a flurry of reports on Grayson's new television ad.  He has timed this perfectly.  My guess is he will do a fairly large buy during March madness, at least through the SEC tournaments when Kentuckians will be watching televison with a great deal of interest and all at once at specified times. 

His new commercial, reportedly airing in Eastern Kentucky, takes Rand Paul, in his own words, and makes him look much more aligned with Joe Biden when it comes to his stance on coal.  Here was Biden during the campaign:

And here is Grayson's play of Rand Paul's words on coal.

Watch as Grayson now begins to get a ton of attention, not to mention a bunch of new donors from the coal counties of Kentucky. People thought Grayson's silent campaign was all madness. It was not, it was all about March.

Comments

[Norval Baird, Sr.]

I say, let Paul and Grayson hammer away at one another like politicians of the past. Their style of campaigning is obsolete. Lets all take a very close look at Bill Johnson,a new kind of politician with little political experience and campaign money,but blessed with a lot of intelligence, education, business experience and skills, military experience and common sense coupled with outstanding moral character. Paul and Grayson are controled by the old style politicians that we don't like. Bill Johnson is his own man. And, he can outperform a well healed Jack Conway in the general election.

[rick]

This ad = votes. Paul's response = money spend with no votes.

[Tony]

David Adams and the rest of the Paul campaign/supporters can't let anything go. They have to have the last word on everything. Adams has already started responding on Twitter and Facebook.

They are in over their head and it will start to show more and more every day.

[Brent]

@Marc

But you can't ignore it. Kerry tried this with the swiftboat ads, and he ended up responding too late. This just allows Trey to paint Rand with whatever brush he wants.

Rand should at the very least show the context of whatever is being misquoted. Or have an ad of him at a coal mine, showing that it is indeed dirty but he does indeed support it. Something.

[Marc Carey]

@Brent: How should Rand reply? The first question is: should he reply? The answer to that is NO.

In battle, you execute your plan knowing the opponent will exercise his. That's why long before you fire the first shot you map out your strategy working backwards from election day to announcement day and then what you do before announcing.

If Paul starts responding to Grayson, as he has been to a minor extent, the big boys will just have fun shoving him around in a circle and will have succeeded in turning him into a whiny little cry baby all the way to a second place finish, or worse.

If you designed a WINNING plan to start with, stick with it.

[ProudConservative]

The Paul campaign should take a few Grayson quotes out of context and see how Trey likes the heat.

I suggest this one for starters:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB2ORMZj5a0

[brent]

It may work, but to say coal is dirty is not to say Rand is anti-coal. All the videos I ever seen of him talking about coal, before he even announced, said he supported it and was against Obama.

It's just a shame that the campaigns have led to this. How should Rand respond do you think?

[Tony]

Great ad Trey! This is the nicest "negative" ad I may have ever seen. This is a HUGE HUGE issue in KY. Look it's clear that Paul is a gaffe machine, I'm sure Trey will have a series of ads just like this one on subject after subject. Or maybe they are not gaffes, maybe Paul really believes this stuff but knows politically he can't say it until after he's elected...

Everyone was probably expecting Trey to bring up GITMO but no he goes the coal route, even better!

[BG]

Seriously, does Trey have one issue ad where he is not misrepresenting Rand?

I should of figured he would go negative since, he's connected to Van Jones and the Environmental fringe.

read more about his Van Jones connection at: http://treygrayson.info/2008/01/treys-environmentalist-ties/

Friend of coal my ***!

[Andrew]

Grayson has a nice record of pandering to environmentalists. He is the one who needs to answer some questions about his affiliation with George Soros' Aspen Institute, an environmentalist think-tank run by people like Van Jones (remember him?). Coal mining Kentuckians simply can't trust Grayson on this issue, and this TV ad shows that this man will say anything to get elected. He is truly becoming the puppet of McConnell that everyone knew he would be.

[Eric]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV-U1C9qXiw