Weird New Anti-Pat Toomey Ad Compares Him to a Kitten

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK1lbXvL_ak

The ad above was released late last month, but it’s now airing on Philadelphia-area TV stations. (I saw it yesterday during the Extra/Access Hollywood block on NBC 10.) It’s from the Senate Majority PAC, a Democratic group, and it compares Pat Toomey to a kitten.

It’s an odd choice, considering I just got over thinking about cigarettes whenever I see a cat thanks to Truth’s #Catmageddon commercial from the Grammys. Now I’m going to think about Pat Toomey every time I pet Detective John Munch?

Per Buzzfeed, the PAC is spending $1.2 million to put this anti-Toomey ad on the air in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton markets. (WNEP-TV, in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, also has this amazing dance remix of “Move Closer to Your World.”)

The ad says Toomey made millions on Wall Street, then used his position in the Senate to pass laws that loosened banking restrictions, cut taxes for rich people, et cetera. “If Pat Toomey had his way, millionaires would pay less in taxes while working families paid more, and big banks would have free rein to continue their risky practices that crashed the economy,” said Shripal Shah in a statement. “Toomey’s agenda is great for Wall Street, but it’s wrong for Pennsylvania.”

Eh. Factcheck.org, a project of Penn’s Annenberg School that describes itself as non-partisan, rated this ad false, saying it distorts the facts. The ad claims Toomey supported a $1,300 tax hike for the middle class; he didn’t.

The claim hinges on a Democratic committee staff analysis of Rep. Paul Ryan’s 2013 budget plan — which Toomey supported. That analysis made assumptions about tax deductions that could “potentially” be eliminated, but such measures were never actually spelled out in the Ryan plan. […]

No matter how tax preferences are handled, the Ryan plan would certainly result in higher-income earners seeing the most tax benefit, Williams of the Tax Policy Center told us. The rate cuts are simply too large for upper-income earners not to reap the biggest benefits. It almost certainly wouldn’t work out to an average tax cut of $286,000 for millionaires — as the ad states — but the tax cut would be substantial, Williams said, and disproportionate compared with those making lower incomes.

But that doesn’t mean middle-income earners would necessarily pay $1,300 more, as the ad states. And an attack based on that assumption is even more baseless given that Toomey has proposed a tax plan that calls for protecting middle-income earners from changes to tax deductions.

“Katie McGinty’s liberal friends in Washington should have done their research before they tried to smear Senator Toomey’s substantial record of fighting for lower middle-class taxes and ending corporate cronyism,” Toomey campaign spokesman Ted Kwong said. “Only one candidate in this race has championed enormous tax hikes on middle-class families and gotten big paychecks from corporations they steered taxpayer giveaways to, and that’s Katie McGinty.”

But back to the kittens. The ad begins and ends with a shot of one cat massaging or kneading another.

But, um, is that a litter box in the ad? Why is there a litter box with cat turds in a political ad? Why is the litter box so close to the cats’ water bowl?! Somehow this must be Donald Trump’s fault.

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