Rep. Paul Gosar Blames Obama for Siblings’ Attack Ads
Says brothers and sisters’ appearance in opponent’s ads ‘does sting’
Rep. Paul Gosar blamed former president Barack Obama for the feud with six of his siblings rooted in Gosar’s controversial political style.
After appearing defiant over the weekend and touting his mother’s support for his “philosophy and policies,” the Arizona Republican admitted in an interview with KFYI-AM radio in Phoenix that it “does sting” to be rejected by three of his brothers and three of his sisters in a series of four attack ads released by his Democratic opponent’s campaign.
He pinned blame for the rift on Obama’s shoulders.
“It always hurts, Mike. You know, blood is supposed to be thicker than water,” Gosar told host Mike Broomhead. “But, you know, this actually details exactly what the left, what Barack Obama actually asked progressives to do, is to get into family and friends, in their face, and not let up.”
Gosar’s brothers David, Tim, and Gaston and sisters Joan, Jennifer, and Grace appeared in a series of four scathing ads released Friday distancing themselves from their brother in Congress and asking voters in his district to vote for his Democratic opponent, David Brill.
Paul Gosar Is Not Working For You (60 secs): https://t.co/Lb1od6J0Jk via @YouTube
— Brill for Congress (@Brill4Congress) September 21, 2018
Gosar is expected to cruise to re-election for a fourth term in Arizona’s 4th District, which Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales rates Solid Republican.
He has caused a stir in Washington with controversial remarks over the years.
Gosar floated the conspiracy theory that the white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year was funded by liberal billionaire donor George Soros (a comment that earned him a letter of rebuke from his siblings). He has also professed to believe that Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim.
“I think my brother has traded a lot of the values we had at our kitchen table,” Joan Gosar, a civil engineer, says in one of the ads, titled, “A Family Defends Its Honor.”
“It’s intervention time,” Tim Gosar, a private investigator, said. “And intervention time means that you go to vote and you go to vote Paul out.”
David Gosar, who has a Twitter handle that he told Buzzfeed he created for the express purpose of denigrating his brother, said that the Gosars in the ad had to “stand up for our good name.”
Gosar alluded to Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” a 1971 book that people on both the left and right have used as a framework for organizing political movements, when describing his siblings’ tactics on the airwaves.
“You know, using Alinsky’s ‘Rules,’ trying to marginalize somebody in regards to trying to call them bad names and ‘you’re sick’ and this other kind of crap,” Gosar said. “But you know the thing about it is, I have worked my district and my district knows me. I’m a very coherent and very accomplished member of Congress, so I don’t have to explain myself to six radicals.”
David Gosar said he’s not surprised his brother is trying to flip the narrative to make his siblings seem like the political radicals.
“He’s capable of saying anything. It’s par for the course,” David Gosar told the Arizona Republic.
“He’s so extreme that his take on this is that we’re so extreme,” he said. “Here’s a guy who wants to block transgender people from using the bathroom of their gender identification. Here’s a guy who wants to kick DACA kids out of the country, who’s marching with white nationalists in Britain.”
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