kolmapäev, juuni 16, 2004
Club for Dumbasses
Ok. Now that I've sufficiently calmed down from my whole Club for Growth fury, I'm actually thinking about this ad and I have to say, what the hell are they thinking? Bush has the base locked up, so the only purpose of any of this has to be to appeal to moderates. Can anyone really believe that exploiting a freshly dead corpse and 9/11 in the same ad is going to do that? It's been less than a week since the man was buried. Is there any way to look at this as not being in very bad taste? It's just fundamentally offensive. And after the response to Bush's first ad with the very brief, rather ambiguous 9/11 image, how are people going to react to this?
More importantly, voters don't understand campaign finance laws. They won't understand that this ad isn't endorsed by Bush in any way. Casual viewers are going to think Bush is exploiting Reagan. Combine that with an increasingly vocal Ron Reagan Jr. and a Reagan family that generally doesn't seem to like Bush very much, and this is going to make him look awful. Bush obviously was going to try to connect himself to Reagan, but he'd have done it subtly. It would have come through surrogate statements and the Reagan tribute at the RNC convention. It would have pissed people like me off, but he probably would have done it somewhat tastefully. This ad throws a major hurdle into that plan.
Also, under campaign finance laws, can Bush ask the Club for Growth to pull the ad? I mean, wouldn't that be coordinating with an outside group? It would certainly be more direct contact than what Republicans have accused Kerry of with the 527s.
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Ok. Now that I've sufficiently calmed down from my whole Club for Growth fury, I'm actually thinking about this ad and I have to say, what the hell are they thinking? Bush has the base locked up, so the only purpose of any of this has to be to appeal to moderates. Can anyone really believe that exploiting a freshly dead corpse and 9/11 in the same ad is going to do that? It's been less than a week since the man was buried. Is there any way to look at this as not being in very bad taste? It's just fundamentally offensive. And after the response to Bush's first ad with the very brief, rather ambiguous 9/11 image, how are people going to react to this?
More importantly, voters don't understand campaign finance laws. They won't understand that this ad isn't endorsed by Bush in any way. Casual viewers are going to think Bush is exploiting Reagan. Combine that with an increasingly vocal Ron Reagan Jr. and a Reagan family that generally doesn't seem to like Bush very much, and this is going to make him look awful. Bush obviously was going to try to connect himself to Reagan, but he'd have done it subtly. It would have come through surrogate statements and the Reagan tribute at the RNC convention. It would have pissed people like me off, but he probably would have done it somewhat tastefully. This ad throws a major hurdle into that plan.
Also, under campaign finance laws, can Bush ask the Club for Growth to pull the ad? I mean, wouldn't that be coordinating with an outside group? It would certainly be more direct contact than what Republicans have accused Kerry of with the 527s.
