The most despicable ad in politics

Vivek Ramaswamy should yank this ad and immediately withdraw from the race. But he won’t.

I thought I had become pretty much numb to our current political atmosphere but yesterday shocked me out of complacency. For those of you who blissfully ignore the campaign ads polluting our airwaves, let me call your attention to the great state of Ohio.

Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy is running a commercial featuring the mother of his opponent denouncing her daughter as a liar. “Wow.” I thought when I read about it (on Fox News, “That’s harsh.” Guess she can forget about Mother’s Day this year.

Image of Ramaswamy and Acton created by Grok

But I was busy yesterday, working the real job that pays my bills and the full horror of this story didn’t hit me until later. Because this woman is a monster. She allowed her husband to rape her daughter. She lost custody of both her children. She failed at the most sacred job a mother has: to protect her children, and then chose to side with a rapist over her own flesh and blood. Amy Acton has had no contact with this woman for 50 years. But Vivek Ramaswamy chose to dig up the most horrific abuse a child can suffer and use it for political fodder.

This my friends is what Donald Trump hath wrought. This is what a decade of supporting an amoral sociopath has brought us to. I know. You were worried about abortion. And the economy. And border control. Those are all important issues. But what you may not realize is that our political soul has been corrupted. I’m old enough to remember a Republican president of the United States who was willing to lose a governor’s election because the party nominated a Klansman. But that president is dead and so is the party he represented.

You think I’m being too harsh? Let me tell you something: as the victim of sexual assault when stories like this break, it retraumatizes every single victim. It returns us to our own pain. Do you know how child rapists get away with it? They convince their victims that nobody will believe them. Amy Acton didn’t lie about the abuse she received as a child. It’s her mother who is lying now. There’s a special place in hell waiting for her, and from the looks of this ad it won’t be long.

Vivek Ramaswamy should yank this ad and immediately withdraw from the race. But he won’t. He’s refusing to apologize or back down. That’s what the criminals have learned from our president. Ohio already had a wife abuser running for reelection to Congress, so what’s one more moral violation? I hope this cheap political stunt blows up in his face. He’s only doing this because he’s losing and he’s desperate.

The rest of us need to ponder a bigger question: Is this the kind of country we want to be? Is winning a political race worth exploiting the victim of child rape? Is there a political issue worth degrading ourselves to this degree?

Let me be very blunt with my fellow Christians: this is not how you win souls for Jesus. To paraphrase the Catholic martyr Thomas More: “Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for OHIO?”

Follow Merrie on the platform formerly known as Twitter @ConservaCatGal

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