Colorado and national Democrats are expressing outrage at a recent Jane Norton recent campaign ad that evokes the 9-11 attacks to criticize the Obama administration for its handling of “The War on Terror.” Littleton Democratic Representative and four-time Iraq veteran Colonel Joe Rice has asked people to sign a petition to have the video removed, while Democratic Party leaders also came out against the ad in a fundraising push in support of U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, who Norton hopes to unseat in November.
“The extreme, untrue and dangerous rhetoric that Jane Norton uses to exploit the memory of those we lost on 9-11 is shocking,” said Rice and Jason Crow, a former U.S. Army Ranger captain, in the petition. “We have zero tolerance for her attempt to raise money and to scare voters into supporting her candidacy. We believe that the events of that day are to be met with solemn reverence; Jane Norton seems to believe they are to be met with a campaign contribution.”
Norton told conservative talk radio hosts Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman that “We have to never forget the nature of the threat against us.” She said the ad is called “Forgotten.”
“We need to remember that we are fighting a war on terror and it seems like the president is more concerned with political correctness than with defeating the radical jihadists.”
Weld County D.A. Ken Buck who is running against Norton in the Republican primary and who also appeared on the show, said he had yet to view the ad.
Buck spokesperson Owen Loftus told the Colorado Independent that Buck didn’t have any response to the ad but he said, as the father of a West Point cadet, Buck was deeply concerned about terrorist action against the United States.
The ad has made waves in the political media-scape for being partly a throwback to the immediate post-9-11 political focus on terrorism. Indeed the argument presented in the ad is that, despite the long list of domestic problems plaguing the country and U.S. wars on two continents, the country’s leaders should again ramp up the War on Terror.
“The liberals in Washington seem to have forgotten” says Norton, then the screen goes dark to the sound of airliners flying.
Sen. John Kerry responded to the ad by evoking the “swiftboat” ad campaign that targeted him, a Vietnam war veteran, very successfully as a military phony and weak on defense.
“Like other desperate politicians who’ve deployed the tactics of fear and smear, she has sunk to invoking images of our heroic service members to launch a thinly veiled attack on Michael Bennet and President Obama.”
Pat Waak, Colorado Democratic Party chair, also expressed outrage. She told the Colorado Independent that Norton should take down the ad.
“Jane Norton’s has shown a shocking level of disrespect for of our men and women in uniform and the families that lost so much during the attacks of September 11th. She needs to immediately take down her website and return any money she raised off the memory of our fallen heroes.”
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