Over the weekend, the Obama campaign released an ad that even the denizens of Free Republic had to admit was impressive. It was a simple idea: Romney sings America the Beautiful (tone-deafedly like only a humanoid can) while damning quotes about Romney and how he loves to ship jobs overseas flash across the screen.
If you have been trapped under something heavy for the past few days, here is the ad:
Brutal, right?
Today, the Romney campaign hit back with an ad of their own, and it’s — well — take a look:
If you didn’t laugh at this ad, there’s probably something broken in your brain, because WTF?! Is this the best they can do? Stealing the Obama campaign’s idea and then royally fucking it up? I can’t even remember what the point of the ad is, and I just watched it. All I’m hearing is President Obama singing the hell out of some Al Green.
Come on, son! What is going on with the Romney campaign?!
Oh, and there’s also the fact that by releasing this ad, Romney has opened himself up to attacks over his refusal to name his donation bundlers (i.e., people who gather donations from a bunch of individual donors). FEC rules do not require candidates to disclose their donation bundlers, but of course President Obama does anyway. Romney, on the other hand, has decided to act shady and disclose exactly jackshit.
Litlebritdifrnt
I am really buying into the conspiracy theory that the Romney campaign is actually being run by Obama supporters now cause this shit is just getting stupid.
Richard
Jesus. Mitt’s getting more and more like Nixon during Watergate, only more pathetic.
His actions just scream “I’m guilty!”.
quannlace
Nice try, Romneyland. Next time, take a few days to think about your next ad.
Not only does Obama sound good, but the crowd is obviously digging it.
Malatesta
Romney has struggled to find a campaign theme. Maybe this will be the one.
“Obama sings classic songs; makes crowds cheer – Romney 2012”
ant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNzsYKjIchg
Kane
Romney is a political plagiarist. But the sad thing is, he doesn’t copy very well. He’s like the dumb kid in class who copies the test answers off the smartest kid, but still manages to get an F.
MaximusNYC
To the extent that Romney has a discernible, coherent campaign strategy, it seems to be, “I know you are, but what am I?”
Roger Moore
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I don’t think this requires any kind of conspiracy theory. It just requires an excessively controlling man at the top who denies his subordinates any initiative. Apparently “I know you are but what am I” is so simple that it’s considered an acceptable response without a direct OK from Mitt, so that’s what we’re getting.
Hill Dweller
Set aside the fact there is no evidence of political favoritism in the Obama administration’s loan program. Willard tried this same attack a couple months ago, but it died once people rightly pointed out he had a very similar program when Governor. Moreover, a lot of the money Willard’s admin doled out went to companies run by his donors.
Willard is an awful candidate running an inept campaign.
Tonal Crow
I think the Romney ad might be a racial dogwhistle.
MobiusKlein
new ad: “Obama is a *CLANG*”
the Conster
@Litlebritdifrnt:
It’s like their campaign staff is a bunch of 8 year olds who just learned about “I know you are but what am I?” and think it’s teh funny. It’s amazing, really that all that Bain money is buying such FAIL. Maybe it’s karma from all those incinerated aborted fetuses.
rlrr
@the Conster:
Romney’s Tumblr looks like it’s run by a bunch of 8 year olds…
Betty Cracker
Honest to god — after I saw that devastating anti-Romney ad with the creepy, off-key singing punctuated by offshore holdings and outsourcing snippets this weekend, I thought to myself, “Self, surely the Romney campaign would not be so goddamned stupid as to attempt to use a clip of Obama competently singing Al Green’s line under anti-Obama messaging. That, self, would be too dumb and me-tooish and silly even for the collection of Sears mannequins who run Romney HQ to come up with,” I thought, ending my thought uncharacteristically with a preposition.
But damn if they didn’t do it! Okay, I will allow myself to believe now that even with unemployment north of 8%, the president will win reelection handily. Oh, it’s not in the bag by any means, and a thousand things could derail it. But if having an utterly incompetent opponent counts for anything — and it does! — I like our chances, fellow Obots.
anthrosciguy
@Kane: He saw that Obama got an “A plus” on his last test, so Romney decided to copy Obama’s answers from that test for the next one. But the last test was algebra and the next one was history, and Romney ends up confused as to why “X=4.7” is not considered a good answer to the question “in what century was the War of 1812”?
lacp
@Tonal Crow: If Willard’s campaign has another week like the last one, that dog whistle’s going to become an air-raid siren.
Garbo
It has that translated into Japanese and then back to English quality that shows they just don’t get what makes something funny, or poignant, or meaningful. Like a cheap knock-off that misses the essential quality but gets some of the details right. I haz a sad for them. Not.
wrb
Next Romney is going to insinuate that Obama is the sort who would listen to Louis Armstrong over Guy Lombardo
Tom Q
This really suggests the Romney folk fail at basic comprehension. The Obama folk ran the America the Beautiful clip because 1)Romney sounded awful and 2) it dovetailed with their message. Team Romney appears to have mised all of that and reduced it to “You show our guy singing? We’ll show your guy singing” — missing the fact that Obama’s Al Green rendition was perhaps his coolest/most charismatic moment of the year.
This goes beyond political malpractice. It approaches utter cluelessness.
jwb
Obama sings, people cheer. That’s a bizarre message. Let’s hope they waste lots of money by putting this one into heavy rotation.
Now, you want to do this right, you find some images of Obama crowds partying it up and juxtapose that to the suffering unemployed.
But of course Romney couldn’t do that even if he cared about the suffering unemployed any more than as a statistic to put into a campaign ad, because his whole life has been about going into companies and firing lots of people.
rlrr
It reminds me of the episode of the Mary Tyler Moore show where Mary Richards and Ted Baxter take a writing class and Ted Baxter plagiarizes Mary Richards paper…
SBJules
If it comes to a sing-off; Our President is able to carry a tune while poor Mitt is off key. I bet he mouthed the words to hymns in church.
anthrosciguy
@the Conster: As Krugman has said: “Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.”
And this Romney ad is what happens when you are catering to Beavis and Butthead.
Scott
Why they didn’t edit out the crowd going wild is a mystery. Fail, thy name is Fehrnstrom.
wrb
@Betty Cracker:
Yup, I was a pessimist- between the economy and the bags of Mitt money, Obama’s chances looked slim to me.
But money can’t buy material like this.
Tonal Crow
@wrb:
I’m pretty sure that that’s what the ad we’re discussing does.
rlrr
@anthrosciguy:
The “party of ideas” never was.
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: The best response to the stranded preposition comments that I’ve seen in years can be found here on what may be my second-favorite blog.
shortstop
@MobiusKlein: Exactly. The real message of this ad is that BLACK president sings BLACK man’s BLACK songs. Omigod, he’s so black.
jwb
@anthrosciguy: yes, but as far as I can make out this doesn’t even work from the Beavis and Butthead angle. For that to work, they have to demonize the crowd—or edit it out to turn the singing into the punch line. The ad does neither. It might work slightly as a dog whistle but if Mitt’s having to spend money solely to sound the dog whistle at this point he’s in a world of hurt.
lacp
@rlrr: Oh, I think they’ve had plenty of ideas – it’s just that they’re all bad ones.
Dave
What is amazing is that Romney’s campaign is that they are in a 100% reactive mode. They aren’t getting their own story out. They aren’t creating new attacks on the President. And their response ads are just tepid remakes of Obama’s original ads.
It’s an amazing piece of political work by the Obama campaign.
ABL
@Litlebritdifrnt: I’m starting to, as well. This shit is bananas.
rlrr
@Dave:
What’s amazing is Obama has a reputation for keeping his powder dry. This leads one to believe he thinks he has plenty of ammo to last him until November…
jibeaux
Obama’s ad has a wonderful ominous tone….reminds me of the Wire, when Omar’s going around with his sawed-off humming “the Farmer in the Dell”.
You come at the king, you best not miss.
Oh, hell, was that ever a miss.
RP
How many voters are going to make the connection between this ad and the Obama one with Mitt singing? In addition to all of the stuff mentioned above, the ad fails because it’s too inside baseball. The campaign staff and some bloggers and pundits might snicker, but most persuadable voters are just going to scratch their heads.
JenJen
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahahahahahaha!!
Oh gawd. Hahahahaha!
(catching breath) (tears) (snort) (choking)
the Conster
@Dave:
This is because they have no idea what else to do. Think about that – they have no ideas, and no idea what to do about that except to see what happens next, and there’s a little more than three more months to go. This is Romney’s “brain” trust at work.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Still trying to flog Solyndra is like Romney going on Fox and Friends. Does he think he’s still in the primary?
OT: SE Cupp on MSNBC just enthusiastically touted the “great and deep” GOP bench in a hypothetical Hillary Clinton v ? race in 2016: Mike Pence, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie.
Mike Pence?
Brian R.
Really? That’s the best you’ve got, Republicans?
kerFuFFler
How ridiculous to point the finger at Obama for the problem of politicians owing favors to donors after the conservative SCOTUS just gave us the Citizens United ruling. Yeah, it’s a problem but they just made it a HUGE problem (because they thought it would benefit their side).
jwb
@wrb: I haven’t been a pessimist about Obama’s chances since the GOP field solidified, but I did think it was going to be a slog, and probably the best we could hope for is holding the White House and Senate and narrowing the margin in the House. It may still be a slog—I won’t feel confident until the polls move significantly—but I now see potential for Obama to put this away early enough that the Dems can focus resources on the House, Senate and some of the state legislatures.
Tonal Crow
@SBJules:
Did he sing:
?
The Moar You Know
Goddamn but Romney’s people are fucking incompetent. It isn’t like Obama’s not beatable; he is. If his campaign were being run by even halfway competent people, this would all be over but the vote counting.
But damn.
The campaign is emptying clip after clip into Romney’s feet, and instead of stopping, they’re all clamoring for more ammo. And a belt-fed gun because the clip-fed one isn’t putting out enough firepower.
lacp
Willard apparently thought that being rich and having held political office once in his life was enough to get elected President. Clueless doesn’t begin to describe it. What’s he left with? “Cyborgs are people, too, my friends?”
Brachiator
@Litlebritdifrnt:
People, people. Once the GOP convention gets here and Romney announces his obviously stellar VP pick, his campaign will run more smoothly than a dressage horse with a dog strapped to it.
No, seriously.
Really. Ask any of the disgruntled Ron Paul supporters snarling about being pushed out of the GOP big tent.
His campaign now is really hapless, but I still hear people calling in to talk radio programs trying to convince themselves that Mitt is the kind of strong conservative who will create jobs, cut taxes and make America strong again.
They make up a Romney that fulfills their fantasies despite the weird statements and actions of the actual Mittbot. Very strange.
Mike in NC
Apparently the Rmoney campaign ads have been outsourced to China. Loses something in translation, huh?
waynski
Agree with everyone on the eight year old comments. My first thought was five year olds, but, meh, close enough.
OT – Where have the trolls been? They seem to be awfully quiet lately. Maybe the silence is actually the sound of troll tears.
feebog
Obama doing justice to an Al Green favorite while the crowd goes wild. Great backdrop for their message. And the neener neener aspect of the ad is going to be great fodder for Stewart, Colbert and Kimmel.
AliceBlue
My God. Even Newt ran a better campaign than this.
trollhattan
@wrb:
Worster–he prefers the Rolling Stones to The Osmonds.
Xecky Gilchrist
…questions like, “Who the fuck is running the Romney campaign?”
Whoever did appears to have retired retroactively and outsourced it all to people who don’t know anything about running campaigns.
jwb
@Brachiator: “His campaign now is really hapless, but I still hear people calling in to talk radio programs trying to convince themselves that Mitt is the kind of strong conservative who will create jobs, cut taxes and make America strong again.”
Yes, and those callers are paid very handsomely for saying that shit, too.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@rlrr: as long as I’m quoting wing nuts… Apparently Jennifer Rubin says that Bain is all Obama’s got and it’s a sign of desperation. She actually used the phrase “shot his wad”. I’m thinking that an ad featuring Romney saying over and over again “let the foreclosure process run its course”, paired with “corporations are people, my friend!” and a couple of others is gonna keep FL and NV in play, though Florida seems to have gone completely fucking wackadoo. How is it none of you Floridians have told us about your Lt Governor?
From ThinkProgress ETA: By “relationships like that, the Lt Guv is responding to accusations that she’s cheating on her husband with a female staffer
Stooleo
Romney is just plain weird; home school, religious weird. Love this quote from the book “Game Change” by Heilemann and Halperin. (yes Halperin is still a douche).
trollhattan
@AliceBlue:
Newt clobbered the snot out of Rmoney and his ads are a great source of material for Team Obama the next four months.
Steve
Romney’s campaign is starting to cause me embarrassment as a white person.
Dave
This all makes sense if you imagine Mitt Romney personally running the entire campaign from a toilet.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Roger Moore:
Might be the Mormon thing in action. That Salon article on Mittens makes it sound like the Mittster has spend his entire life surrounded by Mormon drones who are convinced Mitt is the one.
TaMara (BHF)
Wait. That….wasn’t….a…parody…ad?
WTF were they thinking?
trollhattan
@Steve:
Technically, there’s a difference between “white” and “metallic.” I’m going with that.
Rex Everything
Incredible. I’m speechless. That’s a pro-Obama ad, pure and simple. If someone on the Romney campaign is actually responsible for it they should be immediately fired. OF COURSE.
If this is legit, if this is how inept the Romney campaign is, then it’s time to get ready for a landslide. I just hope it’s as massively expensive a loss for the GOP as possible.
(ABL: Thank you for posting actual posts again.)
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@SBJules:
We called it making a joyful noise.
shortstop
@trollhattan: Bwa.
Kane
On the campaign trail Romney is criticizing President Obama for wanting to hire more teachers, firefighters and police, yet in his ad he is accusing Obama of middle class layoffs.
Could Romney be any more incoherent and inconsistent?
GregB
For the coup de grace Obama will reveal that Romney heavily invested in the gay porn industry.
Tom65
I’m actually starting to feel bad for Republicans.
Tonal Crow
@GregB:
Wait? Romney did something that makes people happy?
Anya
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
WTF does that even mean?
shortstop
@Kane: Public employees are not the middle class; they are welfare cheats who suck on the public teat. Only employees in the private sector are the middle class, and it’s the job of vulture capitalists, not community-organizer upstarts, to lay THEM off. You’re welcome.
Petorado
Reality has a well known liberal bias. Honesty has a well known liberal bias. And after this Romney response, it’s obvious that creativity also has a very strong liberal bias.
I guess conservatives will just have to resort to the things that are biased towards them: fear and racism.
Allan
It would be unseemly for the Obama campaign to directly remind voters of the thrill they felt when they heard him sing Al Green.
Thanks, Mitt Romney!
Brachiator
@jwb:
RE: “His campaign now is really hapless, but I still hear people calling in to talk radio programs trying to convince themselves that Mitt is the kind of strong conservative who will create jobs, cut taxes and make America strong again.”
Interesting theory. Not sure that it holds up. But hey, it’s summertime.
BGK
Not much of a contribution but:
Here in a swingin’ part of swing-state Florida, we’re getting carpet-bombed equally with Obama and Romney ads. The “America the Beautiful” Obama ad has been in very heavy rotation. I first saw it Saturday morning, and nearly passed out with joy. So far, all Mitt’s been counter-punching with is Obama-is-a-big-fat-liar ad.
leinie (iPad)
I love that clip of the President singing. Hell, it’s the ring tone on my phone assigned to my husband. Because the campaign RELEASED it as a ringtone months ago.
Glad I don’t live in a swing state, or every time that ad aired I would think my phone was ringing.
SatanicPanic
The Romney campaign failed a very basic test here- imagine how the ad will sound to people who are getting up to go to the kitchen during a commercial break.
shortstop
@Anya: It’s a variation on the old too-pretty-to-be-a-lesbian line, but I’m flummoxed as to how the “black” comes into it.
quannlace
Charlie Pierce has a good piece about this. The refusal to release more tax returns isn’t due to stubbornness, it’s contempt. In Romney’s mind there are two kinds of people, him and his family and the Help. And how dare the Help question him and demand anything!
Linda Featheringill
@Tonal Crow: #43
Beautiful. Just beautiful.
Culture of Truth
yes it’s totally inside baseball, but at this point Romney is just hoping to secure Mark Halperin’s vote.
SatanicPanic
@Petorado: Most surprisingly, pitch has a liberal bias. That I didn’t see coming.
Nina
I’m still nervous about the fall campaign, and what will happen when those gobs of Republican money start falling from the sky.
But money can’t buy class and no amount of money in the world will make Mitt any smarter.
Anya
@shortstop: Maybe she’s saying most black women are ugly. She’s a black republican so don’t discount a huge dose of self-loathing.
Hoodie
@shortstop: That was my reaction as well, that it comes from the tradition of a Jesse Helms’ “you had that job until they gave it to someone else..” “Obama taking care of his friends” implying Obama is taking care of a bunch of brown-skinned freeloaders and moochers. This is why they didn’t kill the cheers during the song — they wanted them to be there because they “sound” blah. The ad is trying to distract working class white voters from focusing on Bain shipping their jobs overseas to Obama giving free stuff to “those” people, i.e., “middle class” = white.
Tonal Crow
@quannlace:
A closely-related angle that needs more play is this: Romney gave McCain/Palin decades of tax returns, but thinks we should see only two years’. Since when does party rate higher than country?
Ecks
The ad is meant to muddy the Obama message. It doesn’t have to be very convincing (in fact it’s probably better that it isn’t), it just has to mirror the form of the Obama ad very closely so that when people have a few days to forget all the details they blur them together and don’t remember who the targets were.
It’s a variant of the sleeper effect.
Crude and hopefully ineffective, but not as dumb as it looks.
pseudonymous in nc
As I’ve said before: if this is how Rmoney and his hotshot team run a political campaign, imagine how they run businesses. Their spotty bare arses are hanging out of the window right now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Nina: I’m never one to misoverestimate the American electorate, but I wonder if the floods of cash won’t actually backfire on Romney at some point. As far as Congressional races go, I have no optimism. I gather Adelson just gave Cantor’s RobertsPAC $10 million
TaMara (BHF)
I just played the ad again so I could hear the Prez’s beautiful voice.
What? That’s not the point Mr. Romney? Sorry, what was the point again? I couldn’t hear it over The President of the United States’ dulcet tones.
Culture of Truth
OMG the calls to 911 are coming from INSIDE the Romney 2012 headquarters!!!
japa21
@Dave: The Obama campaign has studied their history. They learned a lot from 2004’s campaign. Define your opponent as early as possible, particularly in regards to credibility. That way, nobody can trust anything he says later on. Kerry didn’t fight back, thinking it would all blow over. Romney is trying to fight back, but every time he tries, it makes him look worse.
Roger Moore
@Steve:
You don’t have to feel embarrassed about that. Every white man is a little snowflake, completely different from every other white man; in no way can the insanity of another white man reflect badly on you. At least that’s what the Republicans keep telling me. Besides, Mitt is actually an early model android, not a human being.
Jay C
@Kane:
More like the (rich, but) dumb kid in class who gets slipped the “answers” by the smart kid, not knowing that he’s being given “F” material just for the fun of it….
japa21
@Tonal Crow: Even more damning is that after reviewing Romney’s tax returns, McCain went and picked Palin.
Culture of Truth
They should have nominated an iPad. People love those.
pete
@Jay C: Yeah, and then Richie Rich and his buddies go beat up the nerd but you what? The nerd thinks it was worth it for the yucks.
JCT
@Brachiator: Actually, there was a recent article at GOS discussing this — last week I think. Not very surprising.
Roger Moore
@Culture of Truth:
I want to see that iPad’s long-form birth certificate!
Citizen_X
Once again, O-man unleashes his Kenyan Force Field, the one with the amazing ability to make his opponents act like idiots.
@Brachiator:
Lol! me steel ur linez.
Beauzeaux
@Litlebritdifrnt: There’s alot to be said for that.
How else to explain it?
Culture of Truth
When an aide asked Palin “Governor, how many tax returns should we release?” Palin responded “Oh, all of them.” The rest is history.
Linda Featheringill
@shortstop:
“Black women who look like me . . ”
I’d guess this line is convincing to folks who haven’t interacted with lipstick lesbians. [Some of those ladies are really lovely, very fancy, and very feminine.]
Culture of Truth
As I noted on my blog before this, Romney has reached the ‘I’m Rubber You’re Glue’ phase of his campaign
GxB
@Tonal Crow: Since when does party rate higher than country?
We are talking rethugs here so I’d spot it around 1982, though I could easily be swayed to the mid ’60’s with a few history refreshers.
Cassidy
What is that?
wrb
@Tonal Crow:
Nah, it is obviously proof that what is revealed
is truly, truly awful.
The pedophilic films or cruelty to dancing horses aren’t sufficient to explain the damage they are willing to take.
and now I shall censor my idea, because I think it would offend just about everyone.
It would be criminal not to speculate.
Thoughtcrime
@Linda Featheringill:
You mean like this one?:
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1061853952/nm0005577
bemused
@Tonal Crow:
Mitt drips contempt. You people don’t need 23 years of tax returns that McCain got. You people will see only two years, the second year “as soon as the accountants have that ready. And these are the two years that (you) people are going to have. And that’s all that’s necessary for (you) people to understand something about my finances”.
FlipYrWhig
@Culture of Truth: Not going to help the whole outsourcing imbroglio.
Thoughtcrime
Seamus, Retroactively:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/16/1110528/-Seamus-finally-on-the-inside
Beauzeaux
@Brachiator:
Start here:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/07/exclusive-limbaughs-parent-company-still-using-actors-to-fake-radio-call-ins-exec-tells-raw/
LanceThruster
@Culture of Truth: Followed by a masterly “I know you are but what am I?”
It’s as if the green Jell-O has coagulated in his brain (I mean the Willard Mechanism processing chip).
Number 5 is alive?!
Ben Cisco
I keep waiting to wake up, thinking that SURELY this cannot be happening in real time.
No? I’m awake then? Okayyy.
Mitt and his team have gone well past the robotic stage, B4 had more self-awareness than this.
mdblanche
Sheesh, how much longer before the Rombot sings this little ditty as an encore?
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Racial prejudice is a terrible thing. If Jennifer Rubin had been born 67 years earlier, it would have kept her from her life’s calling as Fuhrerbunkersprachenfrau.
Yutsano
@Cassidy: Portia DiRossi. Best example of the species I can think of off the top of my head.
redshirt
@Tom65: Don’t. Compassion is for those who deserve it. Republicans don’t. They must be crushed into dust.
Emptypatriotism
For me, and what has not been really discussed is how the Obama ad points out the empty patriotism of Romney. You sing a patriotic song that everyone knows, but as it is sung (well or poorly is irrelevant)by Romney, you see a list of his actions that are not patriotic. Firing Americans and sending their jobs overseas, hiding your assets from taxes and overseas, etc. They may be legal, but for me and a lot of other folks, they are not remotely patriotic. Actions speak louder than words. Those are not the actions of someone who believes in America, and the singing makes it more obvious.
Mnemosyne
I’m getting a dogwhistle from that ad, too. Especially paired with the “Who is Obama helping? His friends.” thing.
They built in some plausible deniability by trying to claim they’re criticizing his ties with the “donor class,” but it’s very easy to draw a different conclusion about who Obama’s “friends” are in this ad.
mai naem
@Hoodie: I heard the dog whistle in the last shot with the Obamaisnotworking website going along with the stereotype of those colored people being lazy. I also would love to know does the writer of that song get royalties everytime they play that ad? Wonder if anybody’s asked Al Green what he thinks about that ad.
Also too, proof positive that the Romney is a scumball offshore job killing machine is that there’s Microsoft alum running for a congressional district in Washington(same one as Burner) where her opponents are calling her Suzanne De Romney. I don’t even remember this being done with Bush Jr.
catclub
@Dave: I will repeat someone else’s post. Obama’s team is inside their OODA loop, killin their doodz.
shortstop
@Linda Featheringill: Right, and where does the black come into it? Plenty of white lipstick lesbians.
@Anya: Okay, I could see that. She’s carrying water for poisonous white critiques of black beauty.
gene108
@The Moar You Know:
Not by the modern crop of Republicans, in a national election, he isn’t.
Regional/religious loyalty will get you a statewide election, but unfortunately for Republicans, in a national election, you still have to shake out some votes from the “coastal elite”, i.e. most Americans, which their message of “the rich get richer, so deal with it” isn’t going to appeal.
Brachiator
@Beauzeaux:
I’ve heard about stuff like this before. It’s a bit like gilding the lily. There are more than enough morans who call these shows for free. And of course, call screeners cherry pick callers to shape whatever viewpoint they want to push.
But I would just love it if stations were hiring actors to shill for Mitt and this stuff was busted wide open. Of course, true believers would never accept that it was happening.
burnspbesq
In which Andrew looks a lot like Thor, swinging the big hammer at Romney.
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/07/yes-romney-perjured-himself.html
This is excellent.
shortstop
@Culture of Truth: Snorting with glee.
LAC
@Jay C: “We’re in trouble. I just checked with the guys at the Jewish house and they said that every one of our answers on the Psych test was wrong.
Boon (Romney): Every one?
[looks at Bluto (Rove) and D-Day (Gillespie) ]
Boon (Romney): Those assholes must have stolen the wrong fucking exam!”
gene108
@Mnemosyne:
The problem with the ad is that “no drama” Obama doesn’t have the image of dishing out political favors to cronies, thus turning the White House into a cesspool of corruption.
Republicans were able to get this sort of idea hung around the Clinton White House, i.e. Tibetan Buddhist monks sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom for $50,000 donations (or whatever the poutrage of the day was back then).
Outside of the wing-nut base, who are happy to believe the worst about Obama, I just don’t see this ad as being effective in getting people to think Obama has Clinton era corruption problems.
Or maybe Romney’s only strategy is to keep feeding “red meat” to the wing-nut base, thus causing a big turnout of Republican voters and the voter ID laws keep enough likely Democrats from voting that Mitt has a fighting chance.
stratplayer
Romney allowing himself to be recorded singing solo is going to be his equivalent of Michael Dukakis’s comical tank ride in 1988. The man is both figuratively and literally tone-deaf.
stratplayer
Romney allowing himself to be recorded singing solo is going to be his equivalent of Michael Dukakis’s comical tank ride in 1988. The man is both figuratively and literally tone-deaf.
redshirt
@LAC: Perfect. And tell me Rmoney doesn’t belong in Omega.
THANK YOU SIR MAY I HAVE ANOTHER! Except of course Mitt would be weildin’ the paddle.
eclare
@jibeaux: Obama = Omar, I love it.
DaveA
Dang, I missed it! Is the “anti-Obama” ad posted anywhere else?
joes527
So, the Romney ad is gone because they forgot to clear the rights.
Is that looting or mooching? I always confuse the two.
The Other Bob
Hey, the video says it is no longer available due a copyright by “BMG_Rights_Management.”
I am not sure who BMG did a favor.
Ruckus
@Dave:
It’s a porta-john and he is on his cell(an 80’s Motorola analog), with a jack hammer working about 10 ft away.
Mnemosyne
@gene108:
That’s why it strikes me as a racial dogwhistle, not a complaint about “crony capitalism.” For all of the complaints on the left about Obama being too cozy with the banksters, etc., that critique hasn’t really made it out to the general public, because there’s not a whole lot of there there. (Obama is cozier with the banksters than most people on the left would prefer, but that’s not the same thing as there being something corrupt or out of the ordinary going on.)
Black president singing a black song to a black crowd + “he’s helping his friends” = dogwhistle, IMO. Otherwise, the ad makes no sense.
Ash Can
Once again, I’m left wondering if we really know who’s running the Romney campaign, and if we’re absolutely sure none of them are named Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
Ruckus
@Petorado:
I guess conservatives will just have to resort to the things that are biased towards them: fear and racism
So they are batting 1000?
Mnemosyne
@The Other Bob:
I kinda wonder if it ran into a weird area of rights where the Romney campaign accidentally bought the rights to the Al Green performance of the song (which you can do without the artist’s permission) when they really needed to license the songwriting rights.
I can say from experience at my job that music rights are a giant pain in the ass to deal with, particularly when one entity owns the performance rights of a specific version of the song and a different entity owns the songwriter’s rights.
Joseph Nobles
I SIPA YOUR MILKSHAKE! I SIPA IT UP!
LOL, silly Romney campaign. No, you may not use “Let’s Stay Together” in a campaign ad. Intellectual property is one of the foundations of the American free market system, you ignorant dolts.
Patricia Kayden
“Come on, son!”
Another great post, ABL. Had to laugh out loud.
Does Romneybot 2.0 and his billionaire supporters have any dirt on President Obama that they’re going to wait until October to release? There’s no way they could be running such a poor campaign and think they can just float The Bot into the White House.
redshirt
But…ba…buuuut MOM! Obama used a song to make fun of me! Why can’t I do it too?!?!!
joes527
@Mnemosyne: hmmmm…. A … what? … 4 second clip of a musical performance that was news event in itself. (yes, they used all of the Obama “performance”, but that constitutes a tiny fraction of the song) Just enough to play “Name That Tune” with and no more.
You would think that fair use would fit in there somewhere.
Not that Romney would recognize the concept of fair use himself.
mclaren
This just keeps getting better and better. A greed-crazed loon who lies his way into a felony about whether he was running his predatory rip-and-run operation in contradiction to his SEC filings, and who most of his own Republican party’s base thinks belongs to a wacko cult, is now gibbering like a drunken lemur about his financial crimes in stark panic while Obama beats him into the ground.
What next?
Will some 12-year-old girl come forward to claim Mitt founded his fortune by pimping her out on the street?
Will an imprisoned drug dealer finally break his silence to claim he got Mitt started in business by flying in a load of coke for him from Guatamala under the radar?
And the Mittster hasn’t even been nominated yet.
Snarla
Drat! I wasn’t in time to watch the video before it got yanked.
DavidG
Ha, Mitt’s ad got pulled down for copyright violations. Is there anything he can’t screw up?
22over7
Seriously, did the ad get yanked because the song is copyrighted? And nobody thought about asking?
Don’t republicans run into the song problem every election?
JenJen
@22over7: Mitt Romney Ad Taken Down Over Copyright Claim
Lolz!!
MikeBoyScout
BMG Rights Management #retroactively retired the ad.
joes527
@JenJen: interesting. team rmoney _is_ making a fair use claim. seems justified to me. i hope that they get the ad back up because i love the audio of obama singing.
Mnemosyne
@joes527:
No, I’m totally serious. Fair use was greatly restricted by the Supreme Court at least a decade ago, so the song’s copyright holder would at a minimum be able to get the clip pulled claiming copyright violation.
That’s why, as I said, I suspect that the Romney folks got the wrong permissions (performance vs. songwriting). Assuming they bothered to get any permissions at all, that is.
(Edited to clarify — as I said, different people would hold the rights to the Al Green performance of the song and to the song itself, so it was probably the song’s copyright holders who complained.)
Edit #2: Also, “fair use” does not apply to advertising. Anyone advertising a product or service — or candidate — has to pay for that use.
Mnemosyne
Fair use rules from the US Copyright Office.
The Romney campaign will probably try to argue that it’s not commercial use and should count under “nonprofit educational purposes.” I honestly don’t know if anyone has ever ruled about the use of copyrighted material in political advertising, so it could get interesting.
Phinneas Tunk
This reminded me of something. It eluded me for awhile, but I realize that it’s the McCain campaigns attempt to make hay with “lipstick on a pig”–an attack so lame that the right-wingers who parroted it seemed disgusted by its low quality. And I think its main effect was to secure endless play of a moment that made Obama seem funny and cool.