The "Career Politician" Mantra in 2016 Election Campaigns

I first noticed it in a local election campaign for Florida's State Senate between Republican Keith Perry and Democrat Rod Smith.  Televised and mailed political ads began to come out from Republican Party headquarters in Tallahassee accusing Smith of being a career politician, as if having run for political office a number of times in itself were something that should weigh in against someone's vote.  His elections were listed, both wins and losses...and the supposedly dastardly process began when he ran in 1992 for State Attorney (and won).  The only problem with this "career politician" tactic here is that Smith's opponent, Perry, also ran for office in the very same election of 1992, his contest being for a seat in the local commission (he lost).  Over the years, BOTH politicians repeatedly ran for public office...so what's wrong with that?  Rod Smith was more successful in the early years, while Keith Perry has only in the last few years been victorious in his political endeavors.  He currently is my state representative...running for state senator seems totally reasonable, as far as I'm concerned.  But it's just as reasonable that a known name like Rod Smith would be running against him.  Both are decent, hard-working men, one of whom is conservative and the other moderately liberal.  I like them both, but I think this "career politician" accusation is completely bogus.  By the way, Smith's campaign has started its predictable retaliation by calling Perry, in turn, a career politician...

At first, I thought that the "career politician" tactic was just a local phenomenon, but recently I've been listening to the Mark Levin radio talk show...Levin, if you don't know, is a feisty and rather intellectual conservative who strongly supports the Tea Party and its advocates in Congress.  He has been dismayed at the Republican establishment and their attempts to replace those in the Tea Party with more compliant politicians during this election campaign's primary season.  In Kansas one such teabagger "troublemaker", representative Tim Huelskamp, was targeted in this way and Levin spotlighted his situation on his radio show.  Although Huelskamp has only served in the U.S. House since he was swept in with the Tea Party movement in 2010, his opponent's ads consistently referred to him as a (you guessed it) "career politician".  I'm not saying that this strategy by itself defeated him, but Huelskamp nonetheless lost his primary election last week.  And in my Florida, another anti-establishment Tea Party Republican, representative Daniel Webster, is also facing charges by his more establishment-friendly primary opponent that he, too, is one of those awful career politicians...

Maybe I'm just drawing upon too small of a sample size, but I see a pattern here.  The so-called Republican Party establishment, as personified by former House Speaker John Boehner, current Speaker Paul Ryan, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has apparently devised the strategy of accusing any of their pet candidates' opponents of being "career politicians".  And why not?  It doesn't distinguish the "enemy" between Tea Party and Democrat, so it's kind of like a "one size fits all" slogan that can be easily inserted into ads in order to place a sense of doubt into gullible voters' minds.  And a gullible voter is what you have to be to buy into this nonsense...