Jon Husted's pitch: electricity prices are high because Obama and Biden closed 23 Ohio power plants — half the state's power supply, he claims — all in the name of "radical climate policies." Supply and demand did the rest.

Never mind that utilities at the time cited cheap natural gas outcompeting coal, or that some of the plants in question were nuclear facilities losing money to that same gas boom — in Husted's telling, it's a simple morality tale about liberals hating power plants. That's not even a good try, but he's playing to his base, or rather, Trump's gullible base.

Brown's campaign isn't buying it. They argue Husted is the one dodging the real story: his own push to bring energy-hungry data centers into Ohio, and his proximity to the FirstEnergy bribery scandal that jacked up utility rates statewide — the largest bribery case in Ohio history, and one Husted hasn't been charged in, but was around for. 'Radical climate policy' isn't driving up bills. It's corporate deal-making Husted helped enable, now dressed up as an Obama-Biden morality play.

"You want to have lower electricity prices?" he asked while speaking during his Senate race against Sherrod Brown. "I want to tell you why they're rising."

"Because Congress, and under the Obama administration, under the Biden administration, they closed 23 power plants in the state of Ohio, representing half the electricity we use on a daily basis," he continued. "They did it. Radical climate policies did that."

"Shut them down, and now we have a supply and demand problem," he added.

Meanwhile, GOP insiders are getting nervous that Sherrod Brown's data-center attack line against Husted is actually working — and worried it'll leave other Republicans gun-shy about backing data centers at all, lest they end up as the next target.

I'm sure he'll just blame that on Obama and Biden, too.