“Surprisingly liberal,” and surprisingly brutal

January 30, 2008

The latest anti-McCain attack ad is surprisingly captivating. Kevin Drum noted that he loves it because “it’s just so … Republican.”

It attacks viciously, it smears without compunction, and the production values are first rate. It’s great. The question is, will $20 million worth of airplay (or whatever it’s getting) be enough to save Mitt Romney’s skin?

I kind of doubt it, but it’s a spot that’s worth watching anyway.

For those of you who can’t watch videos online, here’s the script:

(On screen: image of Hillary Clinton) Announcer: “One candidate voted against the Bush tax cuts — both times. And pushed more restrictions on gun owners’ rights. The same candidate joined Ted Kennedy to sponsor amnesty for illegals. And was even mentioned as a running mate for John Kerry.”

(On screen image of Clinton shifts to the left, revealing image of John McCain.) Announcer: “Hillary Clinton? No, John McCain. John McCain, surprisingly liberal.”

Here’s why I like the ad: it’s accurate. It shades some context away, and uses some ridiculous language (“illegals” is not a word), but fundamentally, there’s nothing in this ad that is objectively, factually wrong.

As right-wing attack ads go, it’s almost honorable.

Those poor Republican’ts. It’s so sad to watch them suffer so.

No, really.

I’m tearing up here.

My heart aches for them.

Their shear emotional pain is too much.

If only I could put them out of their misery…

  • As right-wing attack ads go, it’s almost honorable.

    Well, except for the fact that it ignores his rather strong conservative voting record after 2000.

    Just look at abortion — on the conservative side of the ledger, there’s:

    –Supports repealing Roe v. Wade. (May 2007)
    — Voted YES on barring HHS grants to organizations that perform abortions. (Oct 2007)
    — Voted YES on notifying parents of minors who get out-of-state abortions. (Jul 2006)
    — Voted NO on $100M to reduce teen pregnancy by education & contraceptives. (Mar 2005)
    — Voted YES on criminal penalty for harming unborn fetus during other crime. (Mar 2004)
    — Rated 0% by NARAL, indicating a pro-life voting record. (Dec 2003)
    — Voted YES on banning partial birth abortions except for maternal life. (Mar 2003)
    — Voted YES on maintaining ban on Military Base Abortions. (Jun 2000)
    — Voted YES on banning partial birth abortions. (Oct 1999)

    His one “liberal” position:

    — Voted YES on expanding research to more embryonic stem cell lines. (Apr 2007)

    It’s the same way on pretty much every other issue.

    So if anyone talks about how liberal McCain is, they obviously don’t have a clue. Hopefully, the media will point all of this out at some point so that the independents who think he’s some sort of “Maverick” will learn otherwise.

    I just won’t hold my breath …

  • Who decreed that all Republicans *must* be conservative? It isn’t called the Conservative Party or even the Neo-Conservative Party, nu?

  • Of course “illegals” is a word. It’s a plural noun in common usage in American English. Everyone knows what it means, especially if you don’t like them. It’s a synonym for anyone whose first language is Spanish.

    Seriously, I love the smell of Republicans stewing in their own juices.

    If McCain and Clinton are the nominees, perhaps the Dems could run this ad in heavily Republican markets – like Oklahoma.

  • Who needs GOP ads. The best “attack” of the day came from Obama as he takes on the whole combination of Bush, McCain, and Clinton, showing that he is the only candidate who will put an end to the Bush/Clinton dynasty:

    It’s time for new leadership that understands that the way to win a debate with John McCain is not by nominating someone who agreed with him on voting for the war in Iraq; who agreed with him by voting to give George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran; who agrees with him in embracing the Bush-Cheney policy of not talking to leaders we don’t like; and who actually differed with him by arguing for exceptions for torture before changing positions when the politics of the moment changed.

    We need to offer the American people a clear contrast on national security, and when I am the nominee of the Democratic Party, that’s exactly what I will do. Talking tough and tallying up your years in Washington is no substitute for judgment, and courage, and clear plans. It’s not enough to say you’ll be ready from Day One – you have to be right from Day One.

    http://liberalvaluesblog.com/?p=2810

  • They seem to be doing a lot of McCain’s job of moving to the center in the Generals for him. Now I want to vote for the guy.

    It also shows how impossible it will be for the GOP to fulfill their hopes of recapturing the Hillary hatred of yesteryear. It’s not going to save them. Sorry, but you can’t just go back to the scandel-mongering of the boom 90’s after looking away and pumping up the worst, most incompetent and corrupt administration in our nation’s history, and then go back to whipping out the smelling salts. Do they REALLY want to redeem the Clinton years by going back and reminding us what kind of mindless inaninities had the DC elite screaming impeachment, once we’re stuck with the bill the current occupant is leaving us? Do your best, guys!

    As I said before, the conservative A.B.C policy (Anything But Clinton) gave us C-R-A-P, and people know it. And they know the President of surpluses, peace and prosperity was not as bad as they claimed. And they know that the President they deified and boostered was not the altruistic hero they claimed him to be. As far as I’m concerned, DC’s hatred of Hillary and love of McCain are both Hillary selling points.

  • dynasty

    Main Entry: dy·nas·ty
    Pronunciation: \ˈdī-nə-stē also -ˌnas-tē, especially British ˈdi-nə-stē\
    Function: noun
    Inflected Form(s): plural dy·nas·ties
    Date: 14th century
    1 : a succession of rulers of the same line of descent
    2 : a powerful group or family that maintains its position for a considerable time

    Chelea isn’t running!!!

  • Memekiller said:

    They seem to be doing a lot of McCain’s job of moving to the center in the Generals for him. Now I want to vote for the guy.

    It also shows how impossible it will be for the GOP to fulfill their hopes of recapturing the Hillary hatred of yesteryear. It’s not going to save them.

    On the one hand I am cackling with glee. On the other I think Memekiller is right.

  • This could work wonders for Obama—just start showing this thing all around the country, and ask people if they want a Democratic President who’s actually a “useful, valuable tool” to Republicans. She can now be “billed” (no pun intended) as “Joe Lie Lite….”

  • after bushco’s neocon deficit spending orgy the terms ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ sound, well, so antiquated; i almost expected to see michael dukakis’s face come out from behind that lady.

  • It also shows how impossible it will be for the GOP to fulfill their hopes of recapturing the Hillary hatred of yesteryear. It’s not going to save them.

    Mitt gives a gazillion dollars to a top advertising company to find the most powerful imagery.
    The agency runs studies and decides that putting Hillary in the foreground works best.

    And you conclude this proves that the GOP won’t be able to fulfill their hopes of recapturing the Hillary hatred of yesteryear?

    Uh……..

    Earth to planet Hillary.
    Earth to planet Hillary.
    Your orbit is decaying…
    And they haven’t even fired their Bubba-is-a-fornicator photon torpedos yet…

  • “Citizens United Political Victory Fund”

    Hmm, let’s see. C…U…(so far so good)…PVP? Where’s the painfully juvenile vulgarity? Awe man…I’m going back to the stonezone.

  • Here’s what the fatassed, drug-addled, Viagra-crazed pimple on America’s ass had to say on his radio show today:

    A defensive Rush Limbaugh, one of Senator McCain’s biggest detractors, just delivered what he called a “non-concession speech” in response to Mr. McCain’s win in Florida Tuesday. “Yeah, it looks like McCain’s pretty far down the line now to having wrapped this up,” he said on his popular conservative radio show today.

    At times, the talk host still seemed to have some fight in him. At other times, he seemed ready to move on. “There’s going to be another election in 2012,” Mr. Limbaugh said at one point.

    “There’s a lot of anxiety among a lot of conservatives about Senator McCain. It’s simply indisputable,but there was no figure in our roster of candidates who rose up to challenge him or to galvanize conservative support. All the candidates on our side, for various reasons, are uninspiring or worse and so just as I predicted the base has fractured. Some going here. Some going there,” Mr. Limbaugh said as he explained Mr. McCain’s victory in Florida Tuesday night.

    “Senator McCain has been able to cobble together enough votes to win in a few states. Fine. He deserves credit for that. But to pretend that Senator McCain is the choice of conservatives when exit poll data from every primary state show just the opposite–he is not the choice of conservatives as opposed to the Republican establishment, and that distinction is key,” the conservative talker said. “The Republican establishment, which has long sought to rid the party of conservative influence since Reagan, is feeling a victory today as well as our friends in the media, but both are just far-fetched and wrong.”

    The talkmaster said Michael Huckabee was partly to blame for Mitt Romney not doing better. Mr. Limbuagh said Mr. Huckabee has “no traction…..He needs to get out.”

    Mr. Limbaugh warned the mainstream press not to interpret Tuesday’s results as the demise of the Reagan movement. “The Reagan coalition is not breaking up,” he said defensively. “The Reagan coalition is going in different directions because there isn’t anybody from the Reagan coalition in the Republican roster of nominees…..Those of us in the Reagan coalition have not lost anything.”

    The talk radio host insisted that Mr. McCain is being supported by “a veritable list of the old country club blueblood establishment.” That claim is debatable, since only 12 Republican senators have endorsed him and many others nurse grievances against him over his crusades against pork and in favor of tighter campaign finance and ethics laws.

    At several points, Mr. Limbaugh said he thought few of his conservative listeners contributed to Mr. McCain’s coalition Tuesday, which showed exit polls showed came largely from moderates, independents and even some self-described liberals. However, the talk host also seemed to allow that some listeners may have ignored him. “You still made up your minds yesterday,” he said.

    Talk about “whistling past the graveyard.” Looks like Rushy’s going to have to get a real job.

  • Mitt gives a gazillion dollars to a top advertising company to find the most powerful imagery. The agency runs studies and decides that putting Hillary in the foreground works best.

    Yes, who am I to question the effectiveness of an advertisers’ study group? This is why no political commercial ever fails to achieve it’s objective.

    I don’t recall that I said they wouldn’t try. I said they’d fail, the same way we fail every time our focus group advisors tells us to buckle on anything that might make us look weak, thereby making us look weak.

  • You must have enjoyed typing that Romney was accurate and honorable, but it should be noted that Romney also denied using the word amnesty in his ads during the New Hampshire debate, after having used the word previously.

  • You guys are all laughing now, but this is going to make it harder for our nominee if McCain gets the nod. They’re pushing him to the center, and that will make it harder for us to convince low information voters that he’s really a Bush-style radical conservative in the general. Really, somebody on our side needs to start running ads pointing up his actually rather sterling conservative credentials.

    It’s not clear to me how Romney (Tweedle-Flip) gets GOP top-down approval while McCain (Tweedle-Flop) doesn’t.

  • shaz, the dems had better learn how to tar and feather the repub candidate in the past 7 years of debacle. hang that albatross around his neck and march him thru every main street in america. it doesn’t matter who the repub nominee is, the message needs to be — you want 4 more years of THIS?

  • McCain as president would be a nightmare. He is a democrat in wolves clothing. The last thing this nation needs is a president who is willing to sell out to the UN and to the liberals. He is the worst kind of liberal…the liberal who claims he isn’t one! You can tell he is a liberal by those who are supporting him. This scenario is just as scary as the thought of Obama or Hillary winning the election. McCain is for amnesty – proven by the McCain-Kennedy Immigration reform bill.
    http://www.heritage.org/Research/GovernmentReform/em975.cfm
    McCain claims water-boarding as torture. HA! Me and my siblings used to waterboard each other while playing in the pool during summer break. He has flip flopped numerous times. In last nights debate, he was pompous and carried himself like a college frat boy who was trying to get one up on Romney. When are people going to wake up!?

  • McCain as president would be a shift from McCain as powerful congressman, but I’m not sure how much of a shift that would be domestically. But McCain would likely win the Iraq war and protect Israel. On the downside – and this is the major beef I have with McCain – he’s anti-Amtrak and anti-rail (or at least seems to be anti-rail). Thus, a McCain presidency would mean that us Amtrak supporters would have to vigorously implore and support Congress on Amtrak against McCain’s wishes to cut the railroad entirely. It is the long-distance trains that are a financial Achilles Heel here, and it is the long-distance trains that need to be saved because they are important to numerous people, Achilles Heel or no. As for short-distance trains and medium distance, they’d probably do ok even without Amtrak (states have footed the bill for such systems).

  • 4 more years? Seems likely it’ll be a congressperson that becomes President. This means that the future President will already have been rather influential in Washington over the past few years – so it would be 4 more years of powerful Congressional and ex-Congressional wrangling by someone we already know. And not George Bush. Thankfully.

  • If people are dissatisfied with McCain, Barak and Hillary, then they ought to put up their own candidate. That would make a powerful statement that conservative Republicans don’t like McCain.

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