Category: Ad War

The GOP has a slew of new web videos up in time for the Charlotte convention. Here's a particularly effective one from the RNC that compares the president's rhetoric in '08 and '12:

And here they use some Jimmy Carter footage to try and link him with Obama:

They're also out with a video based on Reagan's "are you better off?" re-tread [NYT], as well as this MoveOn-level lame attack on Obama's "bump in the road" line:

Over the weekend the Romney campaign released a highlight reel from the convention that revealingly omits any Eastwooding. The campaign put out a motion infographic as well, highlighting some Romney "build that" rhetoric and reminding voters how much Obama hates success:

From the other side, the Obama campaign is hitting Romney/Ryan on taxes in this seven-state TV ad claiming Romney will help the rich and hurt the middle (ad buy size currently unknown):

They also wonder, in this web video, what loopholes and IRA games Romney might be playing. Meanwhile, Obama makes the call to Kal "Kumar" Penn:

Mike Riggs isn't amused:

BuzzFeed's Zeke Miller says it is "perhaps the most direct appeal ever for the pothead vote"–as if all it takes to seduce marijuana users is a hastily made video that characterizes smokers as junkfood gobblers with pubescent attention spans. 

What's more insulting is that Obama would wink and nod at marijuana use for political gain while federal agents under his control raid the homes and businesses of people who operate state-legal medical marijuana businesses, threaten to seize the assets of landlords who rent to medical marijuana businesses, raid the homes and threaten the children of men and women who sell marijuana paraphenelia, and continue to obfuscate and denounce research that shows the medical uses of marijuana.  This video isn't an appeal, it's a half-hearted reach-around.

In outside spending news, though they're still lagging far behind their GOP rivals, the pro-Obama Super PAC Priorities USA had its best fundraising month yet. Elsewhere, the Koch Brothers' dark money group, Americans For Prosperity, is out with another TV ad featuring a disappointed Obama voter, as well as this TV ad starring a Canadian who says the US healthcare system is better off without Obamacare:

Lastly, Christianist soldier Chuck Norris and his wife stir up the religious vote, warning of "1000 years of darkness":

This Chuck Norris video is more convincing:

Ad War archive here.

by Chris Bodenner A green shoot from the GOP on gay rights:

A major same-sex marriage fundraiser hosted by former RNC chairman Ken Mehlman and other Republicans provides one of the sharpest illustrations of how gay rights is becoming a cause among more elite, establishment members of the GOP. In addition to Mehlman, who recently announced that he was gay, the list of attendees includes several surprises, such as Ben Ginsburg, one of the Republican Party's top lawyers, and Henry Kravis and Paul Singer, two of the biggest donors to the GOP. According to one gay-rights activist involved in similar efforts, the fundraising pool goes even deeper. "There is a strong conservative case to be made in favor of gay marriage," former McCain campaign manager and fellow same-sex marriage fundraiser Steve Schmidt told the Huffington Post on Tuesday.

Money quote:

"I think there is a growing mass of people in Republican politics who are fundamentally sick and tired about being lectured to about morality and how to live your life by a bunch of people who have been married three or four times and are more likely to be seen outside a brothel on a Thursday night than being at home with their kids… There is a fundamental indecency to the vitriol and the hatred directed against decent people because of their sexuality.

Bold words – but the "prominent Republican" who said them didn't have the balls to print his or her name. So obviously there's still a long way to go. By the way, TNR recently released from its archives one of Andrew's conservative-based essays on gay marriage from 1996. The kicker:

The process of integration—like today's process of "coming out"—introduced the minority to the majority, and humanized them. Slowly, white people came to look at interracial couples and see love rather than sex, stability rather than breakdown. And black people came to see interracial couples not as a threat to their identity, but as a symbol of their humanity behind the falsifying carapace of race. It could happen again. But it is not inevitable; and it won't happen by itself. And, maybe sooner rather than later, the people who insist upon the centrality of gay marriage to every American's equality will come to seem less marginal, or troublemaking, or "cultural," or bent on ghettoizing themselves. They will seem merely like people who have been allowed to see the possibility of a larger human dignity and who cannot wait to achieve it.

An extended version of his argument here.

(Photo by David McNew/GettyImages)

We’ve been waiting for months to see what’s in the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility but the Obama administration’s point-blank refusal to investigate, let alone prosecute, the war crimes of its predecessors has stalled it for more than a year. We are now told by Newsweek that the establishment – surprise! – will let itself off:

While the probe is sharply critical of the legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques, NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors—Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor—violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action—which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.

Just as the CIA will never allow its staffers to be held accountable for anything; just as the DHS and the intelligence services would never hold anyone in their ranks accountable for the undie-bomber plot; so the DOJ will never allow its past members be held accountable even for war crimes.

Some wonder why the public distrusts Washington. But over the last few years, the rank stench coming from its self-serving elites should be enough to disturb anyone with a sense of smell. 

(Photo: Eric Holder by Alex Wong/Getty.)

I know it’s boring, but Norm Ornstein does boring really well. You think Obama and the Dems have accomplished nothing in one year? Look closer:

[T]his Democratic Congress is on a path to become one of the most productive since the Great Society 89th Congress in 1965-66, and Obama already has the most legislative success of any modern president — and that includes Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson. The deep dysfunction of our politics may have produced public disdain, but it has also delivered record accomplishment. The productivity began with the stimulus package, which was far more than an injection of $787 billion in government spending to jump-start the ailing economy. More than one-third of it — $288 billion — came in the form of tax cuts, making it one of the largest tax cuts in history, with sizable credits for energy conservation and renewable-energy production as well as home-buying and college tuition. The stimulus also promised $19 billion for the critical policy arena of health-information technology, and more than $1 billion to advance research on the effectiveness of health-care treatments. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has leveraged some of the stimulus money to encourage wide-ranging reform in school districts across the country. There were also massive investments in green technologies, clean water and a smart grid for electricity, while the $70 billion or more in energy and environmental programs was perhaps the most ambitious advancement in these areas in modern times. As a bonus, more than $7 billion was allotted to expand broadband and wireless Internet access, a step toward the goal of universal access.

Any Congress that passed all these items separately would be considered

enormously productive. Instead, this Congress did it in one bill.

Lawmakers then added to their record by expanding children’s health insurance and providing stiff oversight of the TARP funds allocated by the previous Congress. Other accomplishments included a law to allow the FDA to regulate tobacco, the largest land conservation law in nearly two decades, a credit card holders’ bill of rights and defense procurement reform.

The House, of course, did much more, including approving a historic cap-and-trade bill and sweeping financial regulatory changes. And both chambers passed their versions of a health-care overhaul. Financial regulation is working its way through the Senate, and even in this political environment it is on track for enactment in the first half of this year. It is likely that the package of job-creation programs the president showcased on Wednesday, most of which got through the House last year, will be signed into law early on as well.

Most of this has been accomplished without any support from Republicans in either the House or the Senate — an especially striking fact, since many of the initiatives of the New Deal and the Great Society, including Social Security and Medicare, attracted significant backing from the minority Republicans.