The not-so-secret story of Arkansas’ U.S. Senate race is the role of outside money. Early this year, not long after the presidential election ended, the Club for Growth started dive-bombing the airwaves with anti-Pryor ads and conducting polls about a hypothetical challenge by Rep. Tom Cotton. The polls moved against Pryor—the hypothetical race became real.
So Arkansas is the state to watch if you want to see conservative messages tested in real time. This one, from the Judicial Crisis Network, marks the first instance I’ve seen of the filibusters of D.C. Circuit judges being used against a Democrat.
The ad’s footnote makes it clear: the “packing” move was Pryor’s vote to allow Patricia Millet’s nomination to proceed. The continued Republican insistence that “court-packing” means allowing the twice-elected Democratic president to fill the empty circuit seats remains impressive.
