Into the liar’s den

Everyone knows that political campaigns and political advertising — especially the advertising of political action committees — often have the integrity of, well, career politicians. The truth is twisted, nuanced, parsed, obfuscated. And more often than not, the campaigns and advertisements spew downright lies.

No wonder voters have such a low opinion these days of career politicians. And no wonder “the outsiders” are disrupting the 2016 election cycle.

Case in point: Manatee homebuilder Carlos Beruff, running for incumbent Marco Rubio’s U.S. Senate seat on the Republican side.

If you talk to Beruff, he’ll tell you that even he — a businessman who has made close to $1 million in political contributions in the past decade and a half;  who has served on state boards as a gubernatorial appointee; and even as someone

considered by some a political insider — even he has been surprised at the ugliness and nastiness that goes on behind the scenes and the lying that goes on in public.

Welcome to the Bigs, Mr. Beruff.

 The operators of Rubio’s political action committee, First Florida Project, started their smear attacks with a TV ad portraying Beruff as a “Charlie Crist Republican.” 

Talk about an insult. Of course, anyone who knows Beruff’s politico-philosophical beliefs laughs at the claim. Beruff and Crist are almost philosophical opposites — ever since Crist’s political sex change. Beruff is  to the right of Rubio.

But this is politics. And as they say: All is fair in love, war and politics.

To that end, Rubio’s hit squad is a group of longtime Republican political operatives from South Carolina, some of whom advised Rubio in his surprising 2010 Senate race and who ran one of his presidential PACs.

Their list of clients — Bushes, McCain, Giuliani, Schwarzenegger, Ernst, DeMint, among others — gives you the sense they can be real pros at fudging the truth and creating negative perceptions in the minds of under-informed voters.

And so it goes: Discredit Beruff among the state’s diehard Republicans. Rubio’s PAC men know there is a viscerally negative reaction among Republicans toward Crist, and they also are trying to hold on to the Republicans who backed Rubio over Crist in 2010. 

But Beruff has his own trump cards — Gov. Rick Scott and Scott voters and running as a non-career politician, businessman outsider like Donald Trump. What’s more, while Beruff may be a neophyte political candidate, he also is an adept business competitor. He hired his own Big League campaign managers, Maryland-based OnMessage — the same group that ran Gov. Scott’s re-election campaign and campaigns for dozens of other Republican congressional candidates.

Turnabout is fair play. OnMessage and Beruff’s strategy: Paint Rubio as a lying, career politician (“I will not run for re-election.”).

Be prepared for another month of political ugliness. Hopefully, you’ll be able to sort out the truth.