Behind the Ad: Mitch and Rand go fishing for votes

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.) 

Who: The Mitch McConnell Senate campaign.

Where: Kentucky / web ad.

What's going on: Tip O'Neill is famous for having said that all politics is local, and this ad proves the point. In it, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell and his best buddy Senator Rand Paul appear together to tell local fisherman that the Senators will stand up for their right to fish wherever they gosh darn want to fish.

The Hill:

The video features clips of McConnell and Paul talking at a rally for a "Freedom to Fish" measure that protects fishermen's access to portions of the Cumberland River around dams.

The legislation was spearheaded by the two Kentucky senators and a handful of other Republicans and passed last week.

In the video, McConnell and Paul criticize the initial plans to build barriers around the dams, a plan officials said was informed by safety concerns, as "government overreach."

"The nanny state is on full display. Trying to tell us what we can do, where we can do it, how often we can do it, as if they're smarter than everyone," McConnell says in a portion of the video.

We have been hearing a lot about how vulnerable McConnell is going to be in 2014 as multiple polls have him below the magic 50 percent threshold. But Democrats won't beat him if they can't find a candidate, and so far that's been the problem.

Anyway, the ad is a cute bit of anti-Washington/pro-fishing propaganda. How could Kentucky voters not like that? And the music sure is pretty.

(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)