New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters (5/22/12) covers the new attack ad being released by Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS group.
Under the (somewhat funny) headline “Subtler Entry From Masters of Attack Ads,” Peters makes it sound like this is something of a scoop, and certainly a pretty big deal:
When it makes its debut Wednesday in 10 swing states as the centerpiece of a $25 million campaign, it is expected to become one of the most heavily broadcast political commercials of this phase of the general election.
So what do Times readers learn?
We get the inside scoop on the focus-group process that Rove’s group used to create the ad.
We learn about how they made a different kind of attack ad, since Obama remains more personally popular than his policies. Apparently the kind of attack they might normally make wouldn’t resonate with middle-of-the-road voters.
We learn that using a “fictional family also allowed for more creative flexibility in creating a rebuttal to the president’s message that although things may not be great, the country is moving in the right direction.”
And, perhaps most important, we learn that the ad is “a deeply researched, delicately worded story of a struggling family.” That’s the kind of language Crossroads GPS might consider using the next time they need to pitch their donors for additional funding (“Even the liberal New York Times says our ad was deeply researched…”).
But is the ad’s content…accurate? Arguably so? Misleading? Who knows. The Times includes one short comment from the Obama campaign, but that’s about it.
The actual ad—all of one minute—makes a series of fairly routine conservative claims about runaway spending, Obamacare making health insurance more expensive, and so on. None of it would qualify as deeply researched—these are TV commercials, after all. But is it true? Not really true? Totally false? Those are the things a newspaper should tell readers, right? The kind of market research the ad’s creators did is perhaps interesting to someone, I suppose, but of little consequence.
Steve Kornacki of Salon.com (5/22/12) attempts to settle some of this in one paragraph:
The Cliff’s Notes version of what’s wrong with this: (1) There’s been no spending explosion under Obama; (2) the increase in debt under Obama can be traced to the economic crash (which dramatically reduced federal revenue), the wars, the Bush tax cuts (which, yes, Obama agreed to extend—at the insistence of Republicans), the 2003 Medicare prescription drug law, and only to a very minor extent the 2009 stimulus; and (3) the economy would actually be in better shape now if Obama had spent more.
Now I’m not saying this is a perfect, slam dunk takedown of the ad. There’s probably no such thing. But it’s at least an attempt to sort out the claims made in the ad, and set them against reality.
Now it’s possible the Times will run a “fact check” sidebar, if they haven’t already, about the ad’s claims. But it won’t much matter. They just told their readers that it was “deeply researched.”
“Creative flexibility” is for gymnasts.
‘Round these parts, we just call it lying out your ass.
Rove is still shoveling it and people still eating it. But not me.
So much for the liberal media
Would someone please pass the cow-chips?
Well, I decided to” deeply research” on Wikipedia….who is this man called Karl?
Oh, a sad early life. His father ran off, the second father adopted him and dad # 2 was a geologist. HA That explains the” deeply researched” tag. LOL, his father was a geologist. : ) So…Karl returned to Sparks, NV and…..went deeply through the landfill garbage for his ideas!
Oh, this is funny, his middle name is Christian, because he was born on Dec. 25th. LOL, good thing he wasn’t born on Oct. 31st..Karl “Halloween” Rove!
OMG! He had a Romney teenagehood! In 1970, he pretended to work for a Democrat ( Karl used a fake name,) He stole 1000 pieces of letterhead and used it to write”Free beer, free food, girls and a good time, for nothing.” Then he handed out these flyers at rock concerts and homeless shelters. Wow, that really messed up the Democrat guy’s campaign. Lying starts early, I guess.
Here’s the unbelievable part…Karl said..” It was a youthful prank..” OMG, that’s Romney -speak.
Well, I guess that makes him a good campaigner for Romney…they both speak the same language. INSENSITIVE! I would like to see Mr. Rove’s birth certificate, because I bet he really was born on Halloween. Scary.
Ah yes the “liberal” media. All the social conservatives who bemoan the scoial liberalism of the media, never seem to connect that fact with the fact that the media is owned and is tightly controlled by Corporate elites who also run the Republican Party. So social conservatives, repelled by the social liberalism put forth on the media, vote for the Republicans, whithout ever noticing, grandma, what big hairy paws you have.
It is very easy to become liberal these days, just be a little less fanatical than the hardest of hard core fanatics at the center of the Republicans. If you are only 99% of what they demand you be you will be labeled a “liberal” and attacked. Goose step in lock step isn’t just a staccato way of marching, it is your life to the Holy American Empire! (To come if they get their way.)
This is a man who seriously, needs to be put on trail as saboteur and traitor to the American people. This mans lies have caused so many deaths all over the world, the only way justice could be meted out would require that he killed horrible, messily and with a lot of noise; and then resurrected and killed again, and again, again.
If he is really christian he should seriously hope and pray there is not such thing as hell, because they will have a very, special select spot for him when he gets there; and it won’t be the guest of honor either.
Mr Rove is the ‘quintessential Republican low-life’. This parasite would choke to death if he ever attempted to expell something truthful from his tiny lungs. He has an obvious disdain for the representative government which affords him the freedom to deploy his ungodly measures toward tricking people to vote against their own best interests. In my view Rove is every bit as grotesque as Hitler – Stalin – Mussolini – Saddam Hussein. His incestuous relationship with Tea Party extremists is wreaking havoc by essentially locking up the gears of government for the benefit of a few massively rich entities. He is a vicious, unpatriotic psychopath that deserves a ghastly end.
The Rove haters make me laugh, especially the ones who spin their gourds researching the guy, like that will get you any closer to what it is that makes this guy tick, and TICK he does, right under their skin. The only difference between Rove and Axelrod is time in the seat and the winning campaigns they’ve worked; brass-tax sees them as equals in effort, but Rove comes out on top in effect. “Keep it classy, Chicago” is more then just a snarky poke in the eye at the O Team, it’s a call out to Axelrod’s demeanor, his core, and it resonates to the morally confined right. I, for one, can’t wait to see the next 14 rounds of this battle.
Gloriana Casey mentioned the “boyish pranks” that Rove did — those sorts of tactics were once once reported as official in 1970 or so, by the first leader (at least of that decade) of the young Americans for Freedom in Parade magazine.
As to boyhood pranks of a Romneyesque nature, I have heard in this election and in the past that Romney had in his early college years a Michigan State troopers uniform and showed it to classmates and fraternity brothers saying that he liked to pull over motorists while wearing it, at the time his father was governor of Michigan and had a security detail of Michigan State Troopers; and where is the comment about that?