The Sierra Club is out with a new web ad today targeting what the group calls “extreme” views from Kentucky’s Republican Senate candidate, Rand Paul.
The ad focuses mostly on his environmental views, which include statements like calling the administration’s threat to hold BP accountable for the Gulf spill “really un-American.” Paul also complained that President Obama’s trip to Copenhagen to last year for the United Nations climate conference was just a meeting with socialist leaders “to apologize for the industrial revolution.” And he made light of the environmental disaster of mountaintop-removal coal mining: “You got quite a few hills. I don’t think anybody’s going to be missing a hill or two here and there.”
The video also throws in some of Paul’s questionable remarks on civil rights and immigration and the 14th amendment for good measure. Sierra Club Independent Action is using the ads to raise funds for their efforts to keep Paul and other GOP candidates they have say are “extremists” when it comes to the environment. There’s justifiable concern in the Kentucky race; Paul leads Democrat Jack Conway by 15 points, according to the latest polls.
“Tea Party Candidates like Rand Paul, Sharon Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Ken Buck, and Pat Toomey are trying to make Americans scared of even what little progress our country has made on clean energy, and global warming,” said Cathy Duvall, Sierra Club’s political director. “We are working to get the word out that we can’t let these extremists run our government.”
Here’s the ad:
