RNC Hits Pelosi on Ethics in New TV Ad

ABC News’ David Chalian Reports: The Republican National Committee is seizing on the terrible headlines Democrats have been facing in the last week in a new television ad set to start airing on Washington, DC cable tomorrow. You can view the ad here. The ad shows Nancy Pelosi in her own words from election night in 2006 promising to run the “most open and most ethical Congress in history” and then cuts to various headlines about the ethics investigations that caused Rep. Charlie Rangel to give up his powerful Ways and Means gavel and Rep. Eric Massa to resign from Congress. The GOP is eager to keep these ethics woes front and center after the Democrats made such a high profile issue of GOP ethical abuses in their efforts to overtake the majority in 2006. The RNC is also clearly making Speaker Pelosi the Democratic bogeywoman in the ad.  It criticizes her defense of Charlie Rangel prior to the Ethics Committee ruling that became public last week and her chalking up any knowledge she had of the Massa affair as simply “rumors” she had heard about from her staff. This is the third consecutive election cycle in which Republicans have tried to play up Pelosi’s negatives in hopes of creating political headaches for vulnerable Democrats who hail from moderate districts – those unlike Speaker Pelosi’s San Francisco district.  These GOP attempts have met with varying success over the years, but have yet to be the silver bullet foil Ted Kennedy or Hillary Clinton used to provide the Republicans. “Pelosi’s wrong.  It’s time to change Washington,” says the ad’s (female) narrator at its conclusion.