Ramaswamy's vile Acton ad is new low, even by GOP standards | Opinion

With no ideas to run on and no accomplishments beyond “We made everything more expensive!”, Republican midterm election candidates seem to have hatched a plan: Let’s just be the most wretched versions of ourselves and see how things shake out.

Republican Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy clearly embraced that line of thinking when his campaign produced a new ad leveraging the estranged mother of Amy Acton, his Democratic opponent, against her. This would be low on its own, but Acton has been estranged from her mother since 1978, after her stepfather was charged with rape for sexually abusing Acton when she was 12 years old.

The mother sided with her husband, and they remained married. He fled the state before trial and never appeared before a judge.

Ramaswamy hits a new low with ad featuring Acton's estranged mother

In Ramaswamy’s ad, the mother, Donna Stearns Arthur, baselessly claims Acton is a liar and “she can't help you if she needs help herself.”

Watching a mother trash the daughter she hasn’t had contact with for decades is painful enough, but when put in the context of childhood sexual abuse, it becomes one of the most despicable political ads I’ve ever seen.

Acton’s younger brother, Philip Stearns, said in a statement: “Our birth mother stayed married to Amy’s rapist until he died. This desperate, disgusting attack reveals exactly who Vivek Ramaswamy is at his core – a pathetic excuse for a man who is willing to hurt anyone as long as it gets him what he wants.”

That sounds about right. Voters are concerned about high food and gas prices, and Ramaswamy is out here trying to use his opponent’s childhood trauma as some kind of cudgel.

Trump is out there showing Republicans the way with his bigotry

Perhaps the Ohio Republican was inspired by his party’s leader, President Donald Trump, who now spends his days at campaign rallies talking about what a nice rump he thinks Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio has.

This is an actual quote from Trump at an Oct. 20 rally describing Husted, who is running for reelection: “I looked at his ass. And then I looked at his legs. I said, ‘His ass, sh-t, it's like a pile of muscle.’”

Make Erotica Great Again?

Beyond that bizarre babble, Trump has been spouting even more Islamophobic rhetoric than usual. At an Oct. 19 rally, he talked about Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Democrat running for U.S. Senate.

El-Sayed’s full name is Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed. Trump mocked the name Mohamed, saying: “If you call somebody from that part of the world 'Mohamed,' you're about 65% sure to get it right. So if you have any problem with names, just call the guy Mohamed, you'll probably be right.”

Republican Islamophobia will continue until morale improves

Setting aside the fact that the “part of the world” El-Sayed comes from is Rochester Hills, Michigan, Trump's comments are just gutter racism. And that's about all the Republican Party seems to have with Trump at the helm.

On Oct. 17, a man named Thomas Teepell showed up at an El-Sayed event and ludicrously demanded the candidate disavow the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed did, but then went on to lead Teepell in a discussion that demonstrated the man’s own ignorance. It was an obvious right-wing attempt to make El-Sayed seem “scary” to racist online rubes, and it failed spectacularly.

But Teepell isn’t just some dude. As independent journalist Marisa Kabas first reported on The Handbasket, he’s a former operations director for GOP Sen. Josh Hawley and his father is a Republican strategist.

So the whole thing was just a flailing, Islamophobic attempt to distract voters from the GOP’s failures and utter lack of substance.

I don't see GOP candidates getting out of the gutter any time soon

Republicans certainly aren’t going to accomplish anything that will help you or me between now and the Nov. 3 elections. So we should expect the loathsomeness to continue at a rapid pace.

Vile rhetoric and behavior won’t gain any of the GOP candidates a single vote. But I do applaud them for being their true selves.

We see you, Republicans. We see you.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk.