Rolling politics thread...

by **jerseyhoya** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 01:12:03

The one tonight focused on a family where the dad had a liver transplant and the daughter had cancer, but Joe Kennedy and the people of Venezuela stepped into make sure they could have free heating oil.

I hope Chavez is paying him well, and he's not such a willing dupe for free. He should at least be making some bank off of ruining his reputation.

I guess maybe they're only running here. A lot of special interest type ads only run here, so that makes sense. They're really well done ads, but I guess they have to be to put lipstick on that pig.

Shame I don't see them on youtube. You could all experience the joy of watching them.

by **drsmooth** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 08:34:33

jerseyhoya wrote:The one tonight focused on a family where the dad had a liver transplant and the daughter had cancer, but Joe Kennedy and the people of Venezuela stepped into make sure they could have free heating oil.

I hope Chavez is paying him well, and he's not such a willing dupe for free. He should at least be making some bank off of ruining his reputation.

I guess maybe they're only running here. A lot of special interest type ads only run here, so that makes sense. They're really well done ads, but I guess they have to be to put lipstick on that pig.

Shame I don't see them on youtube. You could all experience the joy of watching them.

I'm pretty sure they've run in CT - my reaction was similar to yours & dajafi's, along the lines of "someone has a twisted sense of humor or is politically tone-deaf - or both"

by **Bakestar** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 08:39:16

Yeah, let's make a commercial where I pump up the guy who is always making kissy-faces with that Ahmadenijad (sp?) dude from Iran. Great politics, that. FWIW, Chavez and Ahmadijdjadadeaeijad are the most well-shaved and ill-shaved world leaders, respectively.

On their faces.

And from DS's Giuliani ad, I'm pretty sure he filmed the spot while sitting on a three foot-high pile of nude, feces-covered Iraqi prisoners.

by **TenuredVulture** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 14:25:25

by **jerseyhoya** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 14:59:27

The lesson of this holiday season...media consultants are lazy and unimaginative.

by **momadance** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 15:07:05

This thread needs Let Them Eat War.

by **TenuredVulture** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 15:16:38

jerseyhoya wrote:The lesson of this holiday season...media consultants are lazy and unimaginative.

I thought Huckster's ad was effective. Obviously, Rudy and Hillary agree with me.

But there's a clear difference between Huck's ad and the other two. Huck's appeared sincere, Rudy and Hillary appear to be sneering at Huck.

by **jerseyhoya** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 15:26:29

TenuredVulture wrote:
jerseyhoya wrote:The lesson of this holiday season...media consultants are lazy and unimaginative.

I thought Huckster's ad was effective. Obviously, Rudy and Hillary agree with me.

But there's a clear difference between Huck's ad and the other two. Huck's appeared sincere, Rudy and Hillary appear to be sneering at Huck.

The turnaround time on those shoots would have been tight for those two to have been filmed post-Huck. To get a crew together, shoot, transfer the film and produce a spot in a couple of days is no easy feat. Rudy's came out, what, two days after Huckabee's? It was already planned and in the queue, I'm sure.

(I work at a Republican Media Consulting firm in DC. That's what pays for the whiskey and burritos. We mostly do House races. Maybe Presidential races can do these things in super time, but I really doubt these are responses to Huckabee.)

by **jerseyhoya** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 16:00:32

By the way, the biggest Mexican hater dropped out today. So we got that going for us, which is nice.

by **dajafi** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 16:16:37

jerseyhoya wrote:By the way, the biggest Mexican hater dropped out today. So we got that going for us, which is nice.

His work here was done. The only candidate on the Republican side who doesn't make a point of hating Mexicans is the one you pretty clearly dislike.

It seems to me like there's (at least) one demonized Other in every Republican election cycle. Four years ago it was The Gays, this time it's The Furriners. Giuliani wanted it to be The Muslims, but that didn't work out for him.

Speaking of which, I love this magazine cover:

by **jerseyhoya** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 16:30:19

dajafi wrote:
jerseyhoya wrote:By the way, the biggest Mexican hater dropped out today. So we got that going for us, which is nice.

His work here was done. The only candidate on the Republican side who doesn't make a point of hating Mexicans is the one you pretty clearly dislike.

If Huckabee doesn't qualify for hating Mexicans (however oddly you define that), then McCain clearly doesn't. I mean, Huckabee's been endorsed by the guy that founded the Minuteman Project, and he wants to have Chuck Norris enforce the borders or so his ads told me. McCain's been the Republican steering the ship to try and pass the guest worker program in the Senate.

by **Rococo4** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 16:44:03

jerseyhoya wrote:
dajafi wrote:
jerseyhoya wrote:By the way, the biggest Mexican hater dropped out today. So we got that going for us, which is nice.

His work here was done. The only candidate on the Republican side who doesn't make a point of hating Mexicans is the one you pretty clearly dislike.

If Huckabee doesn't qualify for hating Mexicans (however oddly you define that), then McCain clearly doesn't. I mean, Huckabee's been endorsed by the guy that founded the Minuteman Project, and he wants to have Chuck Norris enforce the borders or so his ads told me. McCain's been the Republican steering the ship to try and pass the guest worker program in the Senate.

Yeah, really - since Mccain was one of the amnesty bill champions this summer I dont think it is accurate to say he "hates Mexicans"

by **dajafi** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 17:11:38

jerseyhoya wrote:
dajafi wrote:
jerseyhoya wrote:By the way, the biggest Mexican hater dropped out today. So we got that going for us, which is nice.

His work here was done. The only candidate on the Republican side who doesn't make a point of hating Mexicans is the one you pretty clearly dislike.

If Huckabee doesn't qualify for hating Mexicans (however oddly you define that), then McCain clearly doesn't. I mean, Huckabee's been endorsed by the guy that founded the Minuteman Project, and he wants to have Chuck Norris enforce the borders or so his ads told me. McCain's been the Republican steering the ship to try and pass the guest worker program in the Senate.

My bad--I wasn't thinking of McCain, I was thinking of Huckabee.

McCain's sane position on immigrants is one of three reasons I'd prefer him to any of the other mutts in that kennel, along with no torture and the fact that, at least once, years ago, he made the point that our military appropriations process is kinda screwed up and wasteful.

by **TenuredVulture** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 18:30:27

jerseyhoya wrote:
TenuredVulture wrote:
jerseyhoya wrote:The lesson of this holiday season...media consultants are lazy and unimaginative.

I thought Huckster's ad was effective. Obviously, Rudy and Hillary agree with me.

But there's a clear difference between Huck's ad and the other two. Huck's appeared sincere, Rudy and Hillary appear to be sneering at Huck.

The turnaround time on those shoots would have been tight for those two to have been filmed post-Huck. To get a crew together, shoot, transfer the film and produce a spot in a couple of days is no easy feat. Rudy's came out, what, two days after Huckabee's? It was already planned and in the queue, I'm sure.

(I work at a Republican Media Consulting firm in DC. That's what pays for the whiskey and burritos. We mostly do House races. Maybe Presidential races can do these things in super time, but I really doubt these are responses to Huckabee.)

Have you ever seen The War Room? In 92, Carville and Stephanopolous got an add out in less than hours. (Carville complained it took too long.) I'd think you could do it even more quickly nowadays.

by **jerseyhoya** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 18:46:41

TenuredVulture wrote:
jerseyhoya wrote:
TenuredVulture wrote:
jerseyhoya wrote:The lesson of this holiday season...media consultants are lazy and unimaginative.

I thought Huckster's ad was effective. Obviously, Rudy and Hillary agree with me.

But there's a clear difference between Huck's ad and the other two. Huck's appeared sincere, Rudy and Hillary appear to be sneering at Huck.

The turnaround time on those shoots would have been tight for those two to have been filmed post-Huck. To get a crew together, shoot, transfer the film and produce a spot in a couple of days is no easy feat. Rudy's came out, what, two days after Huckabee's? It was already planned and in the queue, I'm sure.

(I work at a Republican Media Consulting firm in DC. That's what pays for the whiskey and burritos. We mostly do House races. Maybe Presidential races can do these things in super time, but I really doubt these are responses to Huckabee.)

Have you ever seen The War Room? In 92, Carville and Stephanopolous got an add out in less than hours. (Carville complained it took too long.) I'd think you could do it even more quickly nowadays.

You can produce an ad using stock footage and pictures and a voice over talent in a snap. The Rudy and Hillary ads were shot specifically for this occasion. You don't just have a crew to shoot these spots on standby all the time. It would cost a fortune. It's not the sort of thing you do a same day turnaround on. I guess they could have been filming that day anyway, and as a happenstance it worked out. Or I guess they could have been shot in a studio somewhere wherever they were the day Huckabee's ad came out, but all this takes time out of an already packed schedule. I dunno, to me they just sort of seem like they were coincidentally similar.

McCain has a new one out as well. This one could easily have been a response.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WTu7drLfRc[/youtube]

by **WilliamC** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 20:18:55

I've seen Hitchens on RealTime now twice I think. He is a funny guy.

by **pacino** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 20:34:11

He's a prick. It's great.

by **dajafi** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 21:40:40

I'm not generally in the habit of quoting George Will. But his take on Hillary Clinton's "experience"is worth a read:

She had two experiences of wielding power regarding important matters for her husband's administration. One concerned the selection of his first, second and third choices to be attorney general -- all in just 50 days. The decisive criterion would be chromosomes: The attorney general had to be a woman. The first selection, Zoe Baird, crashed because a slipshod selection process did not discover that she and her husband had employed two illegal immigrants as domestic help and had not paid Social Security taxes. Then Kimba Wood failed because she once hired an illegal immigrant before such hiring was itself illegal, a nonoffense magnified by the Baird debacle.

The third choice was Janet Reno, whose eight-year tenure was notable for three things. One was the botched assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in which 86 people died, 17 of them children the assault was supposed to rescue. Another was seizing, at gunpoint, 6-year-old Elian Gonzales from his Miami relatives and deporting him to Castro's Cuba, from which he and his mother had fled in an escape in which she drowned. The third was the optional appointment of an independent counsel to investigate the Whitewater land deal, an investigation that led to Paula Jones. When Hillary Clinton adamantly opposed a financial settlement with her, the investigation meandered to Monica Lewinsky and impeachment.

The second of Hillary Clinton's important experiences was the drafting, in secret, of a national health care plan. It was so dauntingly baroque and ominously statist that a Congress controlled by her party would not bring it to a vote.

Her experiences that should matter most to primary voters reveal consistently bad judgment. Her campaign's behavior radiates bad character.

by **VoxOrion** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 08:24:27

Whoa attorney generals.

by **Bakestar** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 09:02:48

VoxOrion wrote:Whoa attorney generals.

Whoa attorneys general.

And yeah, the record of Senator Clinton is notable, at least from an outside perspective, for its lack of commitment to anything more than the principle of winning. Please nominate someone else, I'll hold my nose and vote for her, but nothing more.

Stop dynasties.

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