If your goal is to turn people away from your opponent then maybe making her sound so appealing is the wrong way to go.

It is that time of year when daily we go to the mailbox to find it choked with political mailer promotions — which, in moments, end up choking our kitchen garbage can. The dubious amount of influence these glossy inserts deliver is not known, but as most people ignore and dispatch these arrivals, one sent out in Arizona for the governor’s race deserves some attention. 

The Arizona Democrats sure seem to be working on making Kari Lake sound awesome with their alleged opposition ads.
This mailer has to be applauded by her, and the GOP.@AZDemParty pic.twitter.com/8NeW9q68fs

— Lie-Able Sources (@LieAbleSources) October 24, 2022

In all ways, it is a standard oppo-research piece from the Arizona Democratic Party. Instead of touting why you should vote for Katie Hobbs, the piece lists reasons the Dems think Kari Lake is an extremist. They give three bullet points of positions Lake has supposedly taken on the campaign trail, and frankly, these make her sound like a rather great choice. I will start out with the second listed policy.

•   Has a plan that would take away Medicare and Social Security benefits from people who’ve paid into it their entire careers.

At first blush, you have to ask how a governor of a state would be able “take away” these federal programs. Well – only by engaging in hyper-partisan wishcasting. The Dems root this claim in a hysterical column from The Arizona Republic by E.J. Montini, where he takes comments from Lake to mean something else, then extrapolates that to a fever-dream level of analysis. After the FBI raid on Mar-A-Lago Lake was quoted as saying “We must fire the government,” and she invoked the 10th Amendment, declaring powers not granted to the Feds fall back to the states.

The paper took this to mean she wanted Arizona to be removed from the union, then explored all of the dire fallout if this were to take place. The entire hyperventilating piece disqualifies itself with this segment: Lake proposed, essentially, that Arizona secede from the union. (We’ll have to pretend for a moment that such a thing is possible.) “Essentially” is doing a tremendous amount of lifting for this fable. This means they took her words to mean something else entirely, played make-believe as a result, and drew up a nightmare fantasy for Arizona – all while insinuating that Lake was the crazy one.

The Arizona Democrats take this bat-crap-lunatic article as proof Lake “has a plan” to eliminate Social Security. This C-list level direct-to-DVD film script scenario is extended in the third bullet point, where more of the hyperbolic fallout of Lake’s non-existent independent state economic plan is laid out.

• Her plan would mean there is no one to operate our airports or secure our border. Military bases, courthouses, and prisons would close – and Arizonans would be left with massive tax increases to pick up the tab.

It almost sounds like a fun thought experiment. One small niggling point, beyond all of this never having been proposed, to say nothing of it being impossible – the border is currently not being secured. In fact, Arizona has attempted to secure its own border and has been fought against doing so by the Biden administration. But now let’s look at the first, and best proposal alleged to come from Kari Lake.

• Would allow anyone, without restrictions, to own rocket launchers – putting the safety of our communities at risk.

If the State of Arizona wanted to lure more people to relocate into its region this is a brilliant plan! If word got out that Arizona granted unfettered rocket launcher ownership the U-Haul truck glut might be the next concern!

The AZ Dems cite a fact check performed on one of their attack ads that confirms this claim – with some unnoted uncomfortable details. The specifics are what the Democrats need to avoid in order to resort to this scare tactic of Arizona being overrun with citizens toting shoulder-mounted ordnances in grocery stores.

In an email, Lake’s campaign reiterated her support of the Second Amendment and rocket launchers. “Katie Hobbs should brush up on her knowledge of gun rights in Arizona before she tries to come after Kari,” the campaign said. Rocket launchers are actually legal in the United States and regulated under the National Firearms Act (NFA). While Arizona does not seem to have a restriction on rocket launchers, the state does ban the rockets or explosives themselves. 12News asked the Lake campaign if she supports the legalization of rockets or if she just supports rocket launchers but received no response.

So, according to the Arizona Democratic Party, Kari Lake wants to fire the Feds, have Arizona pull out of the United States, and distribute rocket launchers to the citizens as a result.

I’m certain the AZ Dems thought this was a winning mailer, but in all honesty, if you simply changed the graphics to red with a GOP logo and an elephant but left the copy in place, Kari Lake is likely to have endorsed this ad.