If you’re not familiar with the sordid story of Henry Brown (which Democrat Linda Ketner nicely summed up in thirty seconds), I’d suggest that you educate yourself. Long story short: GOP Rep. Henry Brown started a forest fire that destroyed 20 acres of a national forest. Brown was fined $7,000 for the damage, but he refused to pay up and fought tooth-and-nail to change the law in order to make it harder to prosecute people who burn down national forests. Pardon my language, but that’s fucked up.
Democrat Linda Ketner has been waging a long shot but well-funded campaign against Brown since the start of the year, and she appears to have blindsided the extremely crusty, extremely arrogant Brown with her attack ads on the issue. So what does Henry Brown do in response?
He sends out mailers featuring Smokey the Bear:
I shit you not, my friends.
(H/T: Elonkey)
Can Smokey due him for defamation?
who makes South Carolinians proud to be Republicans.
This is either A) An arrogant fuck-you to his opponents (but the very, very, very little I know about him still tells me he’s not that clever), or B) One of the most astoundingly stupid things I’ve heard this cycle. Certainly not close to the most evil, but one of the most stupid.
With the millions of dollars it takes to run a Congressional race today, you think somewhere along the line this would have passed someone’s eyes who would have put the brakes on it.
… that he won the “Friends of the Forest” award before he burned Smokey’s home down?!?