Watch the above advert ‘Obamaville’ by Rick Santorum’s campaign all the way through… Did you see it??
If not, watch this:
Santorum’s campaign have been caught using subliminal techniques in their advertising to try to build a cognitive connection between US President Barak Obama with the President and dictator of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
This really is an all new low for political advertising, the Santorum candidacy and the Republican Party. It’s so morally bankrupt that it’s almost comical.
Republican (and Tea Party) Super Pac FreedomWorks for America have launched a website to try and unseat one of their own – Senator Richard Lugar. The sitting Republican Senator has been in office in the State of Indiana since 1977.
FreedomWorks for America aggressively support their preferred candidates and are never shy in taking on incumbent Republicans.
Senator Lugar is being attacked for not having lived in Indiana since 1977, when he moved to McLean, Virginia. According to the SuperPac, when he visits Indiana, he stays at taxpayer-funded hotels. The US constitution states that Senators must live in the state in which they hold office, so if the accusations are justified, Lugar is breaking the law.
The tongue-in-cheek website invites the population of Indiana to send an email to Senator Lugar offering him a place to stay next time he’s visiting the state, thus saving the tax-payer some cash. Once you send an email, you’re invited to contribute to the campaign.
It’s a neat little campaign which would have been relatively cheap to put together, but provided that the issue is salient enough, could end up yielding significant contributions.
Wesleyan Media Project have released data which shows the massive extent to which Romney and his supporters dominated the Florida airwaves. Romney and his SuperPacs ran almost 13,000 ads on broadcast television across the state, whilst Gingrich and his supporters have aired only 200 spots.
Newt is fighting an advertising battle reminiscent of King Leonidas and his famous 300. With such huge numbers against him, Newt needs find his creative equivalent of the ‘Hot Gates’ of Thermopylae.
If Newt can create copy which has enough magic to go viral (as Will.I.AM managed to do for Obama in 2008), he could make Romney’s numbers count for nothing.
Here’s a nice little voter-generated ad that’s doing the rounds on social networks together. The image highlights the difference between the way in which Obama and Romney treat blue collar / service workers: Romney is pictured getting his shoes shined, whilst Obama gives a cleaner a fist bump.
It’s interesting to see that Romney’s personal wealth is quickly becoming a real sweet spot for attack. It seems so un-American to attack someone for business success, but clearly things like the Wall St Crash and the Occupy movement have fundamentally altered the middle ground of politics.
This is advert, paid for by a Newt Gingrich supporting SuperPac, is the most impressive piece of attack communication I’ve seen of the Presidential race thus far.
The live TV debates are, arguably, the single most important communication factor in a Presidential contest and this piece of prophetic advertising will no doubt haunt the dreams of any Republicans weakly leaning towards Romney.
Almost every candidate in history has been accused of ‘flip-flopping’ and ‘u-turning’ at some stage, to the extent that the accusation has lost meaning. This advert brings home to roost what the realities of having a ‘pragmatic’ Presidential candidate will be.
The ad also contributes to the wealth of communications that question (gaff-prone) Romney’s ability to take on Obama from the podium.
This flip-flop spot is so much more powerful than yet another ad that takes a quote from a candidate (out of context, of course) from years prior and contrasts it with a quote from the present day.
Gingrich’s SuperPac ‘Winning Our Future’ is reported to be raking in donations by the millions of dollars. With a win in South Carolina under Newt’s belt and this strong attack ad on the airwaves, I bet Team Romney are beginning to feel a little less certain about things.
This is possibly the most extreme negative ad we’ve seen in the primary campaign thus far.
The ad accuses Romney of killing corporations while an executive at private-equity firm Bain Capital, and reasons that since Romney has previously likened corporations to people, he is therefore a “serial killer.”
The ad’s narrator explains “As head of Bain Capital he bought companies, carved them up and got rid of what he couldn’t use. If Mitt Romney really believes ‘corporations are people, my friend’ than Mitt Romney is a serial killer. He’s Mitt the Ripper.”
This line of attack is incredibly ‘un-Republican’ and much more akin to the sort of negative ad that Democrat candidates might typically use. The spot will no doubt have Obama supporters licking their lips.
Newt Gingrich continues his attacks on Mitt Romney with this latest spot that accuses him of various ‘liberal’ crimes, including having the audacity to learn French.
This, at first glance, might seem to be one of the more bizarre pieces of negative political communication. However, do not underestimate the extent of hostility that Republican voters feel towards the ‘liberal elite’ that they feel are in control of the fate of the nation.
In this ad Newt Gingrich successfully paints Romney as being alien to and unappreciative of the concerns of your average American conservative. It’s not pretty, but it works.
Newt Gingrich has released a very amusing new video which tries to spook the Republican electorate as to how Romney might perform against Barack Obama in the televised debates.
The video features a montage of comments Romney has given that have raised eyebrows, among them – justifiably or not – the now-infamous story of Seamus, the family dog, that Romney once tied to the roof of the car during a 12-hour road trip to Canada.
This ad does well at lampooning Romney. Perhaps it could have been helped along by a montage of Newt speaking powerfully towards the backend. That would have removed some of the comic genius, but might have helped give viewers a reason-to-believe that Newt was justified in making the assertion about oration.
Mitt Romney is being painted as a ‘vulture capitalist’ in a new series of ads that attack the Republican primary front-runner’s activities whilst working for investment banking company Bain Capital.
Mitt Romney has stormed to victory in New Hampshire, but Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry are unlikely to make it easy for him in South Carolina as their new line of attack seems to drawing blood.
Romney’s investment banking firm — Bain Capital — in its restructuring activities made some companies go bankrupt and left workers high and dry his opponents are using this as an example of Romney being a ‘vulture capitalist’.
The ad is overly long and fairly dry, but it will certainly strike a cord with blue collar Americans who hold Wall St responsible for the dire economic straits that the USA find themselves.
The airwaves post-Iowa have been dominated by a political action committee, or SuperPac, called Restore Our Future. The campaign, which supports Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, ran more than $1.2 million of negative ads in Iowa, mostly aimed at Newt Gingrich.
That’s a lot of advertising, in a short space of time and in a tiny geographic area.
Above is an example of the attack advertising that has been credited for relegating Newt Gingrich to a pathetic 4th place finish in Iowa.
These private pressure groups are not allowed, by law, to coordinate with candidates official campaigns, but after recent regulartory rulings, their ability to run advertising and have an impact on elections has been greatly increased.
Romney’s official campaign ran $852,370 of advertising in Iowa, all of which was postive messaging. It’s amazing that Restore Our Future and the Official Romney campaign seemed to have such a complementary strategy without being in any sort of cahoots.
