Gov. Mike Beebe's weekly radio address jumps feet first into the current raging political debate.
REPUBLICAN/KOCH/AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY CAMPAIGN THEME: Arkansas sucks. Elect more Republicans.
DEMOCRATS/BEEBE THEME: Arkansas is doing pretty good, considering. Stay the course with Mike Beebe and a Democratic legislature.
The Koch lobbyists are trashing Arkansas in generic TV ads. They are designed to complement their mail attacks on Democratic legislators on which they are spending hundreds of thousands of unreported dollars.
Beebe directly takes on the out-of-state Koch billionaires' $175,000 TV buy trashing Arkansas and, by implication, the Beebe administration and Democratic majority legislature.
Why would any group spend money trying to trash Arkansas's image? I can't answer that. The funding for Americans for Prosperity remains a secret and originates mostly from out-of-state, and its organizers don't answer questions about their benefactors.
Strong stuff.
Or read it on the jump.
I'm thinking the Democratic pushback against a takeover of the state by out-of-state money (money that wants to degrade air and water quality through lax regulation and fatten the pockets of the wealthy) may be working among our populist electorate, no matter how much they don't like Barack Obama. The Koch TV ad buy trashing Arkansas was sign enough that Beebe's popularity carries some weight.