FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF GREAT TIMING: “It’s come to this: Activist group’s Virginia ad shows Republican trying to run down minority children,” as Allahpundit noted at Hot Air, yesterday.
The outfit responsible for this excrescence is Latino Victory, kicking in their contribution to the Democrats’ “Ed Gillespie *is* the alt-right” messaging effort in Virginia. As noted on Friday, Gillespie’s advertising lately has taken a turn towards focusing on crime, including and especially MS-13 and sanctuary cities, and the culture-war hot button of removing Confederate statues. The liberal response to that is double-pronged: (1) scream “scaremongering!” (2) scaremonger the hell out of the race themselves by comparing Gillespie repeatedly to a white nationalist tiki-torcher. (Note what’s playing on the TV at the end of this spot.) You would have thought that the rebel flag and Gillespie bumper sticker on the car would be enough to convey the message, but no, sure enough, there’s a Gadsden-flag license plate too just to make sure tea-party alumni know this is aimed at them as well. It’s a sure sign that you’re in the home stretch of a bitter race when the “my opponents are child predators” ads start running.
From that far left fever-swamp fantasy to the brutal reality of today’s events: “Eight dead in terror attack after truck careens down a cycle path near Ground Zero before the male Uzbeki driver, 29, runs off and is shot by cops while waving paintball gun and yelling Allahu Akbar,” the London Daily Mail reports, with a sidebar exploration of “How terrorists have turned to vans and lorries to murder hundreds of people in a matter of months.”
Latino Victory has since pulled their ad. As Twitchy asks, “So, did they grow a conscience? Or were they just trying to bury it after today’s deadly terrorist attack in New York, where a man mowed innocent pedestrians down with a truck?”
In any case, naturally, the same media that went on a rampage over Sarah Palin’s clip art after Democrat Gabrielle Giffords, a George H.W. Bush-appointed judge, and 17 others were shot in Tucson in January of 2011 won’t lose much sleep over the horrific timing of yesterday’s ad. Just think of the media as Democratic activists with bylines and both responses make perfect sense.
UPDATE: NewsBusters notes that the ad mirrors “an actual murder [from this past June] involving a 17-year-old Muslim girl wearing a hijab who was chased down in Sterling, Virginia, by a suspect in a vehicle. According to police reports, the suspect then abducted and murdered the young girl with a baseball bat, and he is actually an illegal immigrant.”