https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsW2uffFaIo

The Corbett and Wolf campaigns are battling it out today via advertisements and quick responses via press release, both claiming that the other camp is lying through its teeth.

In the same day that the Corbett campaign released its newest attack ad, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Wolf released a response ad entitled “Get Real.”

The 30-second spot opens with Wolf himself speaking, saying “Have you seen Tom Corbett’s ads attacking me? Get real. It’s Tom Corbett who’s been sticking it to the middle class on taxes.”

Only the first eight seconds of the spot focus on responding to attacks from the Corbett campaign before moving on to attacking Corbett himself.

The ad flashes news headlines about Corbett’s main weaknesses in this year’s gubernatorial election: the legacy of his education funding reduction and his refusal to tax natural gas drilling.

Wolf’s voice continues in the background. “Corbett cut a billion dollars from education,” he says. “Now, almost 80 percent of school districts plan to raise property taxes. Meanwhile we’re the only state that doesn’t charge oil and gas companies an extraction tax. And Corbett raised your gas taxes through the roof.”

The ad closes with a last shot of Wolf. “I’m Tom Wolf. I’ll be a governor who stands up for the middle class for a change.”

The general scope of the ad’s response – in addition to the quick release after Corbett’s latest ad – suggests that Wolf’s ad had already been filmed and held in waiting until the Corbett campaign released something new that would inevitably address taxes on the middle class.

In response to the ad, the Corbett campaign used much of the same evidence as it used in its most recent “More and Less” commercial, citing all of the same reasons why Tom Wolf is, in fact, “sticking it to the middle class.”

The Corbett campaign claims that school districts are planning on raising property taxes due to pension costs, not cuts to education.

In response to Wolf’s accusations that PA is the only state without an extraction tax, Corbett referenced Act 13, which he signed into law in February 2013, as reason why an extraction tax is unnecessary.

Act 13 instituted a local impact fee, which “has provided over $630 million for local communities from the natural gas industry for vital infrastructure projects.” Wolf’s claim, however, is still true, as an extraction tax provides more money to the state as a whole while most of the impact fees go to the community in which the project was taking place.

Finally, in response to Tom Wolf’s claim that he would be a governor who would stand up for the middle class, the Corbett campaign provided a gif of Conan O’Brien laughing hysterically.