Sasse’s surrogates on O-Care: His daughters

Midland University President Ben Sasse’s young daughters tout their father’s opposition to ObamaCare in the candidate’s newest ad in the Nebraska Republican Senate primary.

{mosads}“He does not like ObamaCare. He’s read it and he realizes how bad it is, and he wants to find a way to, um, destroy it and rebuild something that’s successful. He despises it,” says 10-year-old Alex Sasse to open the ad.

Twelve-year-old Corrie adds that their father “tries to ignore it” when “people say bad things about him,” and says that the family prays for Sasse’s opponents in the race at breakfast.

Alex goes on to tout Sasse as an “outsider” who wants to “fix Washington,” and Corrie concludes by making a pitch to her father: “Can I put in now that I want a horse, very badly?”

The two girls are speaking unscripted in the ad, according to the campaign. But the focus on ObamaCare is no coincidence — the healthcare law, and which candidate will be sufficiently opposed to it if elected, has been a central debate in the Republican primary.

Sasse on Monday was the target of an ad from the other front-runner in the primary, former Nebraska state Treasurer Shane Osborn, that questioned his opposition to ObamaCare, using Sasse’s previous comments against him.

As a former adviser to the secretary of Health and Human Services in the George W. Bush White House, Sasse had made numerous speeches and penned op-eds on the law before and after it was passed.

Many national conservative figures and groups have touted that experience as part of the reason they believe he’ll be well-suited to dismantle and replace the healthcare law. But Sasse’s detractors point to some of those op-eds and speeches, in which he appeared to praise or accept parts of the law, as evidence his opposition to ObamaCare is motivated by political opportunism.

Sasse’s choice to highlight his opposition to the law and to use two of his best possible surrogates to do so indicates the candidate is taking the debate seriously.

Sasse and Osborn, along with three other Republicans, will face off in the primary on May 13.