Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell went after his tea party primary opponent Monday with an ad accusing him of being an unreliable Republican.
The YouTube ad attacking Kentucky businessman Matt Bevin is made up almost entirely of footage of Bevin speaking at the annual state Fancy Farm Picnic on Aug. 4.
"We're on the same team here, I'll tell you that much," he says, addressing what the McConnell campaign would have viewers believe is a crowd of Democrats, although the Republican Senate leader spoke at the same event.
The ad, called "Bailout Bevin," also challenges Bevin's affiliation with the tea party movement, quoting him telling the National Review Online, "I've never been a member of a tea party."
The ad also attacks Bevin for "voting for a fringe candidate instead of George W. Bush," and donating to Democratic candidates in the past.
"In '04, I was just so fed up with the choices that we were given," Bevin told National Review Online.
The McConnell campaign also zeroes in on what it calls the "$200,000 in taxpayer bailouts" that it alleges Bevin's Connecticut company got from Washington.
"Bailout Bevin, not a Kentucky conservative," the ad concludes.
Bevin campaign spokeswoman Sarah Durand told Politico the McConnell campaign is simply using the attack ads to avoid a discussion of the senator's own vote and leadership decisions, which she suggested are similar to the positions of liberal Democrats, not conservative Republicans.
"Mitch McConnell can make all the misleading Web videos in the world," Durand told Politico.
"But it doesn't change the fact that he voted for amnesty three times, the Wall Street bailout, the Fannie and Freddie bailout, debt limit increases, massive tax increases, and pay raises for himself, and now he's refusing to defund Obamacare."
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