DSCC uses World Trade Center image in anti-Brown ad; Update: Rudy erupts

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee wants to paint Scott Brown as a Wall Street crony who is out of touch with the normal, everyday people of Massachusetts.  Considering their candidates’ disdain for retail politics, that’s a rather laughable accusation anyway, but the DSCC goes from laughable to jaw-droppingly inept with the imagery used in the ad.  In order to represent Wall Street, which building do you suppose the DSCC used in conjunction with Brown?

A new ad from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee usesan unlikely symbol of Wall Street greed: The World Trade Center.

The image in the attack on Scott Brown for his alleged closeness to Wall Street pictures the Trade Center and the destroyed Marriott Hotel on its western side.

A National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman, Brian Walsh, attacked its use.

“Using the image of a site where over 2,700 Americans died in a terrorist attack to distort Scott Brown’s position on regulating Wall Street is both distasteful and disrespectful. Martha Coakley should immediately renounce this ad and call for it to be removed from the airwaves,” he said.

Has anyone ever seen a major campaign this badly handled in one short week?  Most of the blame goes to Coakley, but the DSCC was the group that sent Michael Meehan to help with messaging this week.  His first contribution was to commit assault and battery on a reporter for the Weekly Standard.  Now the DSCC chooses an image of the World Trade Center, Ground Zero on 9/11, to represent Wall Street and to attack Brown.  That’s not just “distasteful and disrespectful” to someone who served in the war on terror and remains in the National Guard to this day, it’s flat-out stupidity.

And don’t believe it when the DSCC claims it was a mistake, either.  The World Trade Center is a very distinctive-looking building, one that every American grew to know in the endless replays of the 9/11 attack.  Anyone working in politics who didn’t recognize it either has been asleep for nine years or is irretrievably dense.

When the dust settles on this campaign, Democrats will be quick to blame Coakley for its failure (assuming she loses), but she won’t be the only one who screwed up this election.

Update: My good friend Guy Benson says this on Twitter: “Coakley is SO opposed to the death penalty for KSM that she put a picture of the building he plotted to bring down in an attack ad.”  (Explanation of death-penalty issue here.)

Update II: Real Clear Politics has the original ad, which the DSCC pulled.

Update III: Rudy Giuliani is … not amused:

“Never in their wildest dreams did they think they would lose in Massachusetts,” says Giuliani. “Now they’re using imagery from an area of New York where thousands of Americans died.” The ad, he concludes, “just understates how excessively negative they’ve become since they’re so paranoid about losing this seat. They’re now using buildings that were destroyed on 9/11 — which is just unthinkable — and somebody better look into what they’re really trying to say.”

What are they really trying to say?  My best guess is, “Help me, I’m drowning!”, but honestly, your guess is as good as mine.

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