{"id":8822,"date":"2006-10-20T12:27:10","date_gmt":"2006-10-20T16:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8822.html"},"modified":"2006-10-20T12:27:10","modified_gmt":"2006-10-20T16:27:10","slug":"the-gops-daisy-ad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-gops-daisy-ad\/","title":{"rendered":"The GOP’s “Daisy” ad"},"content":{"rendered":"

The strategy is about as subtle as a sledgehammer: Vote Republican or you might die<\/a>. I know this is supposed to be the devastating ad that saves the cycle for the GOP, but I’m not at convinced the Republicans’ “Daisy<\/a>” ad is as effective as they think it is.<\/p>\n

The Republican Party will begin airing a hard-hitting ad this weekend that warns of more cataclysmic terror attacks against the U.S. homeland.<\/p>\n

The ad portrays Osama bin Laden and quotes his threats against America dating to February 1998. “These are the stakes,” the ad concludes. “Vote November 7.”<\/p>\n

Brian Jones, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said the ad would run on national cable beginning Sunday, but he declined to discuss specifics of the buy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can watch the commercial online at a variety of sites; I saw it at Outside the Beltway<\/a>, which also conveniently offers a transcript for those who can’t watch clips at work. James Joyner, who is one of the few conservatives I like reading every day, calls the ad “incredibly heavyhanded,” which strikes me as a fair assessment.<\/p>\n

But the next question is perhaps the more politically salient one: will it work? I kind of doubt it.
\n
\nThe ad is quite direct in its message: there are a lot of dangerous terrorists out there, and they still want to kill Americans. In this sense, it’s very much in line with the latest spot from the far-right Progress for America Voter Fund, which unveiled an ad called “They Want to Kill Us<\/a>” last month.<\/p>\n

Bear in mind, neither ad explains why Republicans are better suited to address the terrorist threat, and neither mention why they believe Democrats aren’t as capable on the issue. The message is apparently supposed to be self-evident: terrorism exists, you might die, so vote Republican.<\/p>\n

The Political Pit Bull, a right-wing blogger with whom I agree on practically nothing, analyzed the ad and, oddly enough, came to the same conclusion<\/a> I did.<\/p>\n

Phase 1: Show terrorists.<\/p>\n

Phase 2: ?<\/p>\n

Phase 3: Win in November.<\/p>\n

The ad doesn’t explain why<\/i> people should vote for the GOP if they want to be safer from terrorism. It’s like RNC thinks that just the image of a jihadi walking through the woods with a rocket or a floating orb (what the hell is that anyway?) is immediately going to inspire people to vote for the person with the R next to his name. And the RNC should know better.<\/p>\n

Even worse, this ad just reinforces the stereotype that the GOP tries to scare people into voting Republican since there’s no substance to it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Exactly. Most political ads at least make some passing effort at persuasion. This doesn’t even go that far — it just shows you terrorists.<\/p>\n

I’d add just one thing: it may be an inconvenient fact for the Republicans, but this isn’t 2002 and the once-strong advantage the GOP had over the Dems on the terrorism issue is gone. The most recent Post\/ABC poll<\/a> showed Americans trust Democrats more than Republicans on Iraq (51-38) and terrorism (47-41). Going on TV and shouting “Boo!” isn’t enough anymore for the GOP.<\/p>\n

It seems this commercial is the Republicans’ Hail Mary pass. We’ll see if it’s effective, but I suspect the pass was tipped at the line of scrimmage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The strategy is about as subtle as a sledgehammer: Vote Republican or you might die. I know this is supposed to be the devastating ad that saves the cycle for the GOP, but I’m not at convinced the Republicans’ “Daisy” ad is as effective as they think it is. The Republican Party will begin airing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}