It's quite a feat, in this numb and debased era, to create a political advertisement so shocking and indecent that people from across the political spectrum feel the need to denounce it. Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who has long fashioned himself as a kind of Donald Trump 2.0--younger and brainier but just as brash--has managed it.

By releasing what may be the most disgusting ad in American political history, he's done more than just reveal his own low character. He's opened a kind of proxy debate on the right about whether a post-Trump conservatism should try to reclaim some baseline morality or continue along its current smashmouth course.

As you might know by now, the story behind Ramaswamy's ad involves child sexual abuse. His Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, was 12 when her stepfather, Cledith Arthur, known as Bud, was arrested and indicted on charges of raping her, though he skipped town before he could be tried. Acton's mother, Donna Arthur, stood by him and lost custody of her children; she never saw her daughter again. (Bud Arthur died in 2004.)

In 2020, when Acton was serving as Ohio's health director, Donna Arthur, fashioning herself as a concerned Christian, gave an interview to the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue attacking her estranged daughter. It was deeply if unintentionally self-incriminating.........

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