McConnell sinks to Ben Chandler's level

The dirtiest trick we've ever seen in Kentucky political advertising came in the 2003 Democrat gubernatorial primary, when with less than a week to go in the election, Ben Chandler launched this attack ad against Bruce Lunsford:



You know the rest of the story. Lunsford, having no time to produce an ad to refute the ridiculous charges that he personally was responsible for the woman's abuse, dropped out of the race and endorsed Jody Richards. Richards came within a whisker of beating Chandler. Lunsford, still angry over Chandler's dirty trick, endorsed Republican Ernie Fletcher in the general election, which was won by Fletcher.

We always felt that instead of dropping out and endorsing RIchards, Lunsford should have stayed in the race and instead punched Chandler's lights out the next time the two of them came face to face. Had Chandler done that to any of us, we'd probably have an assault charge on our record now because we wouldn't have let Chandler skate with anything less than a bloody nose, a black eye and possibly a couple of knocked-out teeth.

Given that we consider the 2003 Chandler ad personally blaming Lunsford for what happened in one of his Vencor nursing homes to have been seriously below the belt, we are disappointed to see that Mitch McConnell is doing basically the same thing, trying to tie Lunsford personally to deficiencies in the Valor health care clinic for veterans.

While we've always admired McConnell's tenacity and instincts in campaigning, we think his latest ads concerning Valor and Lunsford are along the same lines of the 2003 Chandler ad we detested for its nastiness.

Shame on you, Mitch McConnell. We expect you to fight tough, but we also expect you to fight fair. Pulling one of Ben Chandler's dirty tricks from 2003 doesn't win you any respect. These ads are dishonorable, but then again we've come to expect that from you. You lost all sense of honor when you abandoned your political protege to Greg Stumbo's wolves three years ago.

Bruce Lunsford, you'll get a pass from us if you decide to slug McConnell in the snout for this. We won't mind if you do to him what you should have done to Ben Chandler.