Wolf Howling: attack ads

Monday, April 12, 2010

The Best Political Attack Ad Ever . . .

This one is hilarious. John McCain goes after J.D. Hayworth with more snark, humor and kill shots than I have ever before seen. Had he only gone after Obama in this manner on his past associations and the Democrat's responsiblity for our on-going massive recession, . . .

Oh well, water under the bridge. Enjoy.

Desperation & Backfire

Obama is getting hammered by McCain over his lack of substance and his lack of judgement. Obama has not been faring well in the public eye. The polls continue to drop. What to do?

The far left is clamoring for Obama to attack McCain. I have yet to find a single instance where actually listening to the far left seemed like a good idea. To the contrary, the stupidest thing that Obama and the left could do would be to attack McCain on anything other than policy differences. Obama is far too weak a candidate and McCain has far too much experience and far too much character for Obama and the left to start inviting comparisons.

Yet panic and desperation have set in. Obama and the left are now throwing the kitchen sink at McCain, highlighting some of McCain's greatest strengths and putting character and associations directly at issue. Big, big, huge, gigantic, enormous mistake.

Trying to paint McCain as dishonest on incredibly small matters wholly ancillary to McCain strengths is just insane. Yet that is precisely what Obama supporters are trying to do.

McCain spent six years getting tortured in a POW camp. There is nothing whatsoever that Obama or the left can do to spin the substance of what happened to him as a negative. Yet we have a series of folks on the left focusing attention on one incredibly small anecdote from McCain's time in the Hanoi Hilton to suggest that McCain was untruthful - i.e., the cross in the dirt story that some on the left claimed came from Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelego, written in 1973.

McCain did not lift it from Solzhenitsyn's writings since it never appears therein, and McCain's story is verified by other POW's, but that does not matter. If you are on the left, the last thing you want the public dwelling upon is the incredible price McCain paid in the service of our country to score what would be, at most, an incredibly small point.

Then on to another unassailable McCain strength. McCain and his wife adopted a child with birth defects from an orphanage in Bangladesh run by Mother Theresa seventeen years ago. They have raised that little girl to adulthood and nursed her to health. This shows charachter, compassion and a willingness to give and to sacrifice on a level beyond most of us. My God, if you are on the left, why would you want to highlight anything at all about this?

Yet we have Andy Sullivan and others calling attention to this matter, claiming that McCain embellished the story of their adoption of this child by falsely claiming that Cindy McCain actually met with Mother Theresa when she was in Bangladesh. McCain never has, though his wife may have given that impression during one of several interviews during which she was asked about the adoption. But wow, to say that Sullivan and his brethern, in an effort to attack McCain, are missing the forest through the trees on this is an understatement of titanic proportions.

The last thing that Obama himself should do is to start making attacks on McCain's character or associations in any possible form. McCain is not perfect, but he has been thoroughly tested and come out of it on the very positive end of the scale. Obama on the other hand has a history of associations so thoroughly suspect and his own character so untested that inviting comparisons would be insane. Moreover, because there is more than a whiff of corruption, sleaze and quid pro quo to a plethora of major events surrounding Obama's rise in politics, it just raises the downsides for Obama on the character issue exponentially.

Obama's two saving graces on the character issue have been McCain, who has himself largely silenced the right, and the MSM who have played deaf and dumb. Let's face facts. In any other election involving any candidate but Obama, a person with his history of associations would not stand a chance of being elected dog catcher in any locality outside of Berkley. So between the MSM and McCain, Obama has gotten the absolute minimum exposure he could possibly hope for on all of this. These are not just sleeping dogs Obama should let lie, they are viscious sleeping pit bulls with an advanced case of rabies.

Yet the Obama campaign unveiled an ad in Georgia that I blogged about yesterday in which Obama slimes McCain for his association to Robert Reid. The McCain campaign fired a back with a shot across the bow, warning Obama that he did not want to make character an issue, and mentioning Bill Ayers. Obviously the Obama camp did not get the message.

Not only is Obama continuing with the ad, but now they are seeking to paint McCain as an elitist out of touch with the "bitter folk" because he is rich and, in answer to an interview question about the number of houses he owns, McCain answered that he did not know, but his wife Cindy would. It turns out he owns none, Cindy owns seven. Regardless, here is the ad

This is a mistake of just huge proportion. In response, the McCain camp announced today that the "gloves are off." Here is the responsive ad from the McCain camp, highlighting Obama's own very questionable housing problem.

That is just a small taste of what lies behind the floodgates for Obama.

And with the gloves off, there is this from the Atlantic:

A group called the American Issues Project said it launched a 2.8 million television ad buy highlighting Obama's ties to Ayres. The group calls itself "an organization representing a coalition of activists committed to raising conservative issues both during and after the election." It includes longtime Republican activists like Ed Failor, Jr. of Iowa. Failor was a McCain adviser in the state. The ad will air in Ohio and Michigan. Here's the script:

Narrator:

"Beyond the speeches, how much do you know about Barack Obama?
What does he really believe?

Consider this:
United 93 never hit the Capitol on 9/11.
But the Capitol was bombed thirty years before -

By an American terrorist group called Weather Underground that declared 'war' on the U.S. -

Targeting the Capitol, the Pentagon, police stations and more.

One of the group's leaders, William Ayers, admits to the bombings, proudly saying later:

'We didn't do enough.'
Some members of the group Ayers founded even went on to kill police.

But Barack Obama is friends with Ayers, defending him as, quote,
'Respectable' and 'Mainstream.'
Obama's political career was launched in Ayers' home.
And the two served together on a left-wing board.

Why would Barack Obama be friends with someone who bombed the Capitol...and is proud of it?

Do you know enough to elect Barack Obama?

American Issues Project is responsible for the content of this ad."

Obama stands a real chance of winning this election if he concentrates solely on shoring up his weaknesses and engaging McCain on policy. But that isin't going to happen. Its panic time for the One. And the advice he is taking is clearly not of divine inspiration.

Update: The Battle of Elitisma. This is hilarious.

A Real Huckster

I never thought that it would be possible for a Republican to come close to the cynicism and hypocrisy regularly displayed by those on the left side of the aisle. Think Harry Reid's political decision to surrender to four al Qaeda suicide bombers in April.

But former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has just proved me wrong. The Huckster has descended to the bottom of the political basement and is, as we speak, digging furiously.

Huckabee's campaign drafted a series of ads attacking Mitt Romney, portraying Romney as being a flip-flopper on several critical issues. Fair enough.

But then Huckabee holds a press conference, playing the ads for the media even as he announces that he is going to take the high road and not release the ads. Thus, Huckabees ads get exposure through the national media while Huckabee simultaneously claims credit for taking the ethical and moral highground. This from the Washington Post:

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee gathered scores of reporters in a room to unveil an attack ad against rival Mitt Romney, then suddenly changed course and renounced the ad he had produced -- but not before playing it for the dozens of television cameras.

Huckabee said the ad -- which attacks Romney for being too dishonest to be president -- was sent to television and radio stations yesterday but will not be broadcast. He said he had made the decision 10 minutes before his news conference, surprising even his top staff. "I pulled the ad. I do not want it to be run at all," he said. The surprise move prompted incredulous questions from the journalists, who pressed Huckabee on whether he was trying to attack Romney in the press while at the same time getting credit for running a positive campaign. Huckabee called that a cynical view of what he described as a heartfelt decision to take the high road. . .

Read the entire article here. There is nothing cynical about questioning Huckabee's actions on this one. There is no other possible way to explain Huckabee's actions. If Huckabee had a true change of heart on this, he simply would have pulled the ads - no news conference, and under no circumstance playing the ads for the news media. Huckabee is playing us for idiots. His is an act of cynicism and hypocrisy that encapsulates the worst of American politics. Bottom line, anyone who votes for this deeply unprincipled man is making a tragic mistake.