WASHINGTON -- It looks like the Club for Growth really holds a grudge. The right-leaning free enterprise group that has been going after Republican incumbents is out with a new ad Monday targeting Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran (R) -- for votes as far back as the administration of President Jimmy Carter.
The 76-year-old Cochran, who first went to Congress in 1973, certainly has cast a lot of votes, first in the House, then in the Senate, where he has been since 1978. There's plenty for opponents to criticize, and the Club for Growth goes for the whole sweep, starting with Cochran's voting with Carter on education policy. It also touches President George H.W. Bush's "read my lips" pledge of no new taxes, and the many times Cochran has backed hiking the nation's debt ceiling, which just about any politician who served more than a year has had to do.
In fact, while the Cochran ad doesn't mention it, Club for Growth president Chris Chocola voted for budgets that hiked the nation's borrowing cap three times: from $6.4 trillion to $7.384 trillion in 2003, to $8.1 trillion in 2004, and to $8.965 trillion in 2005 and 2006. Chocola was a Republican congressman from Indiana from 2003 to 2007.
The Club For Growth ad is not the only one being dropped on Cochran, who is being challenged by state Sen. Chris McDaniel. Senate Conservatives Action, a political action committee founded by former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), also announced it was spending more than $300,000 on a spot touting McDaniel.
Watch the ad above.
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