Alan Grayson's 'Taliban Dan' ad

(Image credit: YouTube)

last updated 8 January 2015

The video: Even in a midterm election year full of scalding campaign ads, Rep. Alan Grayson's latest attack on his Republican challenger is a doozy. Grayson, a Florida Democrat, compares GOP candidate Daniel Webster's position on women's issues to the Taliban's. (Watch the video below.) "Religious fanatics try to take away our freedom in Afghanistan, in Iran and right here in central Florida," an announcer says in the ad, which then cuts to a recording of Webster, saying, "Wives submit yourself to your own husband... that's in the Bible." In an earlier ad, Grayson's campaign called Webster a draft dodger, but the nonpartisan FactCheck.org called that charge "false."

The reaction: This ad will backfire on Alan Grayson, says Mark Schlueb in the Orlando Sentinel. Webster was really telling husbands to look deeper into the Bible instead of clinging to the passage saying wives should submit. With tactics like that, "Grayson risks eroding some of the support he may have won from independent voters." Sorry, but the ad is spot-on and quite "damning," says Brian Beutler at Talking Points Memo. Webster is a member of the fundamentalist evangelical Institute for Basic Life Principles, "where women are trained to be 'obedient and virtuous.'" Come on, says Ed Morrissey at Hot Air. If Webster is a dangerous "extremist" because he believes in the Bible, "a whole lot of Democrats and Republicans" are religious fanatics, too. Watch the ad: