Nice DayOne Day,One Nice!!!!

Yes, that’s right, the Florida GOP actually produced an ad – a really lame, crappy ad – criticizing a Democrat for being too gun-happy, presenting unhinged footage of Rambo and Private Pyle as excerpts from “CFO Alex Sink’s Official Fraud Investigation Training Video,” interspersed with jaunty music and a random clip of Sink saying “You’re darn right!”  Ha ha, these kids today and their hilarious interweb TV bacteria!

Apparently Sink, the Democratic candidate for governor, spent $255,000 on assault rifles for fraud investigators over the last two years, which the Republican Party Of Florida considers excessive.  Sink’s defense: “I rely on my law enforcement people to evaluate what the risks are and what they need.”  Fair enough; that’s pretty much what Dubya said about his generals in Iraq for five years, right?

The Florida Police Benevolent Association has Sink’s back, mainly because it does not appreciate cops being portrayed as homicidal lunatics for wanting to arm themselves:

An outrageous attack advertisement, produced by the Republican Party of Florida and subsequently posted to the Bill McCollum for Governor website, portrays our officers as a deranged Marine recruit in one clip and as Rambo in another. The ad was a swipe at gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink, criticizing her decision to purchase advanced weaponry for her sworn officers at her agency. More appalling is the fact the Bill McCollum, Florida’s chief law enforcement officer, would condone placing this despicable ad on his campaign website.

In effort to score some cheap political points, Bill McCollum has enraged our officers as well as the entire law enforcement community. His extreme lack of judgment in this matter begs the question “Will Bill McCollum, as Governor, put political gain above officer safety?”

The RPOF must have realized that slandering cops as Vietnam psychos was maybe not such a good idea, since they ended up pulling the video off their website, which they don’t usually do.  I’m not sure whether they actually felt shame or embarrassment, or simply realized how ridiculous their position looked.  After all, this is the same guns-are-awesome party that:

• Opposed the ban on assault weapons

• Made it illegal for police to trace “crime guns” back to their sources

• Supports deadly force as an acceptable and legal remedy for any threatening situation

• Believes that the only answer to gun violence is… more guns

• Repeatedly identifies itself as the law-and-order party (which is totally not contradictory at all), to the point where it wants the police to stop anyone who looks undocumented and demand to see their papers.

So yeah, you’ll forgive me if I seem little bit… skeptical of the Republicans’ sincerity when they use Rambo to caricature Democrats and police as out-of-control gun nuts.