Forecast: right-wing attack ads heading for Michigan

Nobody can take the gloves off, throw mud and make it land so hard it sticks, like conservatives can.

There was the race-baiting Willie Horton ad in 1988 that hobbled Michael Dukakis so badly that George Herbert Walker Bush practically jogged backward in the sprint to the White House, taunting the Massachusetts governor as he dragged his bum leg to the finish line.

Then there was the more recent Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad campaign in 2004 that fragged the decorated Vietnam veteran John Kerry by making him seem lower than Benedict Arnold despite the fact that the Democrat was running against an AWOL-prone reserve pilot who stayed stateside (and drunk, apparently), during the conflict, hiding out in the Air National Guard, or at bars or country clubs on the lam, depending on what day it was.

On the Swift Boat tip, this was always my favorite.

Now imagine right-wing and “free market” money men putting together a supergroup of slime merchants in 2008 to tarnish, vilify and otherwise bugger Dems in swing state congressional races from state to state. Actually you don’t have to imagine it, they have!

The minds behind both the distorted Willie Horton ad and the factually challenged Swift Boat campaign have melded in an office in Des Moines, Iowa, operating under the name American Future Fund. Right now they’re brewing up a storm for the swing-state airwaves, which this time around means your living room and mine.

A writer from our sister site, The Iowa Independent, published a story Tuesday lifting the puss-veil off this all-star hit machine (which, by the way, emanates the sound of evil laughter when it’s running).

Iowa Independent’s Jason Hancock reports that their handiwork has already made it to Minnesota:

In March, an ad run by AFF in the race between Democrat Al Franken and Republican Sen. Norm Coleman for Minnesota’s U.S. Senate seat caused the state’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party to file a formal complaint with the FEC alleging that the group violated federal election law and that its ads constitute blatant electoral advocacy.

“The American Future Fund is a shadowy nonprofit organization,” the complaint said. “It purports to be exempt from tax under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. But its notion of ‘promoting the social welfare’ is to send valentines to electorally troubled Republican Senate candidates. The Commission should take immediate steps to enforce the law and expose this group’s secret financing to light of day.”

We’ll be keeping an eye on American Future Fund’s inevitable reach into Michigan, where congressional Republican incumbents such as Joe Knollenberg, Tim Walberg and Mike Rogers are in tight races. Depending on their tactics, look for video Valentines to be aired for the three above-mentioned Bush loyalists. Or perhaps look for their Democratic opponents, namely Gary Peters, Mark Schauer and Bob Alexander — ostensibly three perfectly fine gentlemen — to be reduced to nothing in a matter of days in the minds of the uninformed masses.