Vivek Ramaswamy, have you no sense of decency?

One thing for sure about politics these days. Just when you think political rhetoric could sink no lower, some candidate takes things to a new low. This week, the all-time, cringeworthy, I-can’t-believe-he-would-actually-say-that award goes to Ohio Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy.

It didn’t used to be that way. I’ve been a political junkie since 1968, when I first walked through the doors of a campaign office: in San Francisco, for presidential candidate Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-Minn.).

Two things I learned early on about politics. One, it’s important. It’s about more than winning elections. It’s about deciding what kind of city, state or country we want, what kind of people we are and whom we want to represent us.

Two, even though politics is hardball and not beanbag, there was still some sense of civility. You could disagree with your opponent strongly, but you never lied, never engaged in personal insults, and never attacked members of an opponent’s family.

All that changed, of course, with President Trump, who broke all the rules. He insulted fellow Republican candidates: “Little Marco” Rubio; “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz; “Low Energy” Jeb Bush. He lied about winning the popular vote in 2016 . He accused former President Barack Obama of “treason” for “rigging” the 2016 and 2020 elections.

There’s hardly a Democratic or Republican critic of his that Trump hasn’t insulted, ridiculed or lied about. Under his brand of politics, there is no bottom anymore. No matter how disgusting, anything goes. And nobody has embraced Trump’s race to the gutter more than Vivek Ramaswamy.

In a new low for politics, Ramaswamy released a television ad last week in which Donna Arthur, mother of Democratic candidate Dr. Amy Acton, looks into the camera and tells voters: “Don’t let her become your governor. … She is a liar.”

Parachuting his opponent’s mother into the governor’s race is wrong enough, but the nature of the relationship between Acton and her mother makes Ramaswamy’s ad truly despicable.

Arthur lost custody of Acton and her brother after her husband, the children’s stepfather, was indicted for raping Acton. There’s no dispute about the facts. According to police and court documents, Cledith Arthur was arrested and charged with the rape of his stepdaughter , then 12, in July 1978, after Acton’s biological father reported him to authorities. The abuse allegedly happened from December 1976 to April 1978.

State authorities removed Acton and her brother from their home and placed them in foster care. Acton has not spoken to her mother since, in roughly 50 years.

Cledith Arthur pleaded not guilty. He was indicted by a grand jury in September 1978, but failed to show at a court hearing . Acton’s mother stayed with her husband and helped him escape law enforcement authorities until he died in 2004.

As a sign there’s still some decency left in politics, Ramaswamy’s decision to exploit a family’s tragic history and present a woman who sided with her daughter’s rapist as a spokesperson for his campaign even offended his fellow Ohio Republicans. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said Ramaswamy should take down the ad. Sen. John Husted (R-Ohio), running for reelection, and Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) also condemned the ad .

In fact, many Republicans were outraged by Ramaswamy’s “mommy liar” ad. But not JD Vance. And not Trump.

Vance, who recently wrote a book celebrating his conversion to Catholicism, told Republicans to “stop whining.” Instead, he said, we should thank Ramaswamy for having “the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is.”

For his part, Trump praised the ad, saying it was like “ hitting pay dirt .” He not only liked the ad, he said he was jealous about it. He told an Iowa campaign rally: “ I only wish I could have had an ad like that against somebody .”

Watching Ramaswamy, Vance and Trump wallow in the dirt recalls that historic moment in the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954 , where attorney Joseph Welch served as chief counsel for the U.S. Army against Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s (R-Wis.) charges that the Pentagon was riddled with communists.

When McCarthy also accused a young member of Welch’s law firm of being a communist, Welch asked the famous question that ended McCarthy’s career and still echoes today: “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

No, Joseph McCarthy had no sense of decency then. And neither does Ramaswamy, Vance or Trump today.