An instantly infamous Republican attack ad in Ohio may be exposing deep fault lines over what comes after Donald Trump, according to an analysis.
In a new column, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote that Vivek Ramaswamy, the GOP nominee for Ohio governor, released “what may be the most disgusting ad in American political history.” In doing so, Goldberg argued, he opened “a kind of proxy debate on the right about whether a post-Trump conservatism should try to reclaim some base-line morality or continue along its current smashmouth course.”
The ad features the elderly mother of Democratic nominee Amy Acton calling her daughter a liar. Acton was 12 when her stepfather was indicted on charges of raping her. He fled before trial, and her mother stood by him, lost custody of her children and has not seen Acton since 1978. The spot first circulated online without attribution, but as outrage mounted, Ramaswamy’s campaign admitted it was behind the ad, then, “in Trumpian style, doubled down,” vowing to spend millions to air it.
“By tacitly siding with a man indicted on charges of child rape," Goldberg wrote, "Ramaswamy has shown us all who he is."
Some of the sharpest criticism has come from the right. National Review, which published its “Against Trump” issue in 2016 before becoming one of the president’s “apologists and bootlickers,” Goldberg wrote, has now run several columns lambasting Ramaswamy.
Conservative commentator Erick Erickson, who endorsed Trump in 2019 despite misgivings, lamented, “We keep being told we must surrender our decency to win and then we lament how indecent the country is becoming," but Goldberg jabbed that he wrote this “as if he had not been one of the ones counseling such surrender.”
Trump and Vice President JD Vance, meanwhile, rallied behind the ad. Vance praised Ramaswamy’s “audacity” and scoffed at Republicans “whining” about it. Trump wrote that he wished “the mothers of my opponents would be so brave as to come forward and explain that their son or daughter is a liar, and much worse.”
“Both men seem to understand that Republicans who criticize Ramaswamy are also implicitly criticizing them,” Goldberg wrote.
That’s especially true for Vance, Ramaswamy’s friend from Yale Law School, who shares his venture capital and tech-right résumé. Goldberg branded both men “charmless, awkwardly imitating the president’s cruel provocations without his dark charisma or comic timing.”
With Trump so unpopular that Republicans risk losing Texas and Kansas, and “the whole gaudy edifice of MAGA” crumbling, the stakes go well beyond Ohio.
“If Ramaswamy loses a state as red as Ohio despite Trump’s imprimatur, Vance might start to look like a bad bet in 2028,” Goldberg warned.