It's not just Christine O'Donnell. If you haven't noticed, candidates from both political parties have focused their energy on scapegoating their favorite villains: China. If you're in Pennsylvania, you might have seen senatorial candidate Joe Sestak's gong-tastic campaign ad against opponent Pat Toomey:
It's essentially become a dirty game of who can make their opponent look like China's best friend: China Emerges as a Scapegoat in Campaign Ads.
In the past week or so, at least 29 candidates have unveiled advertisements suggesting that their opponents have been too sympathetic to China and, as a result, Americans have suffered.It's all China, all evil, all the time. Easy scapegoating, and it's not a Democratic or Republican thing -- the attacks are coming from both sides. In the end, it's all about jobs. America's losing them. China's taking them. Voter, are you going to help the evil candidate that's responsible for this?
The ads are striking not only in their volume but also in their pointed language.
One ad for an Ohio congressman, Zack Space, accuses his Republican opponent, Bob Gibbs, of supporting free-trade policies that sent Ohioans' jobs to China. As a giant dragon appears on the screen, the narrator sarcastically thanks the Republican: "As they say in China, xie xie Mr. Gibbs!"
In an ad featuring Chinese music and a photo of Chairman Mao, Spike Maynard, a Republican challenger in West Virginia, charges that Representative Nick Rahall supported a bill creating wind-turbine jobs in China.
And on Wednesday, Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, began showing an ad that wove pictures of Chinese factory workers with criticism that Republican Sharron Angle was "a foreign worker's best friend" for supporting corporate tax breaks that led to outsourcing to China and India.