GOP House candidate “shoots down” drone in new ad

Giving vivid illustration to his small government, anti-surveillance message, Republican House candidate Matt Rosendale launched a campaign advertisement on Monday that depicts him shooting down a government drone.

Rosendale, currently a state senator from Montana, is facing off against four other GOP candidates in a primary for the state's sole seat in the House of Representatives.

The ad begins with an overhead shot of Rosendale in the drone's crosshairs, standing in a field next to a four-wheeler. "I'm Matt Rosendale and this is how I'd look from a government drone," he says.

"And this is what I think about it," he adds as he aims a rifle at the drone and fires. The drone's camera lens shatters and the words "signal lost" appear onscreen.

"The federal government is too big and too powerful," Rosendale continues. "More taxes and regulations put Montana families out of work. Spying on our citizens: that's just wrong.

"I'm Matt Rosendale and I approve this message because I'm ready to stand tall for freedom and get Washington out of our lives," he concludes.

The ad carries on the proud tradition of would-be congressmen firing guns at things they don't like in campaign spots. In 2010, when then-Gov. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., was running for the U.S. Senate, he aired an ad in which he put a bullet through the cap and trade bill that was under consideration in the upper chamber at the time.

And last month, Will Brooke, a Republican candidate running for the GOP nomination in Alabama's 6th House district, released an ad that showed him firing several bullets at a copy of Obamacare before throwing the health care law into a wood chipper.