The Official 2012 Campaign Ad Thread

[Meeker]

Is anyone but Paul running TV ads yet?

[Meeker]

That's also not an ad from Cain's official campaign; it's a PAC or something.

[Meeker]

Newt's First Paid Ad Drop of the campaign!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brdrjLavTzU

Dropped in Iowa. Great introductory ad. $250k ad buy. Very positive ad keeping with his theme over the years of not dropping negative ads.

Which state legislature(what I presume) is shown in the ad?

Well, considering the ad is being aired in Iowa...

[Meeker]

What the hell is Red White and Blue Fund and who is giving them money to run Rick Santorum ads?

[Meeker]

It's hilarious how Santorum lists Beck and Palin support as positives. And also that Bachmann doesn't expect her supporters to know how to vote.

The Romney ads are generally high quality.

Those "How to caucus" videos are standard; Hillary and Obama both had them in '08 and I'm sure the other Republicans have them now or will soon.

[Meeker]

Why can't some of these campaigns figure out how to disable likes/dislikes and comments on their videos? Amateurs.

[Meeker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8SsxLUjYCA

Ron Paul ad- "Serial Obama"

Ron Paul's campaign doesn't make any sense. If he truly wants to get his message out as much as possible and win as many delegates as possible, then the best course of action is to work to make the primary as drawn out as possible, and attacking the non-Romney's does not help towards that.

I think his theory is that if he can take out the other non-Romney's then somehow Republicans will turn to him as the only non-Romney left standing.

[Meeker]

Hahah, running a general election campaign against this guy is going to be fun.

Obama's 2012 re-election campaign slogan: "Hope? Nope."

You're confusing campaign slogans with the things idiot teabaggers write on their signs.

You do realize that Obama is effectively proving that the 2008 "hope" stuff was complete and utter nonsense in the eyes of the entire electorate if he engages in a 1980-style scorched earth campaign against Romney, right?

In a desperate and pathetic attempt to win re-election on a pathetic record, Obama is clearly going to go after Romney the same way that Carter went after Reagan. How did that work out for Carter again?

All Romney needs is his own "there you go again" moment.

Obama has his base of roughly 40% of the electorate who will vote for him no matter what. About 10-13% of the electorate that Obama won over last time is just BEGGING for a reason to publicly state, "I can't vote for him again," and Obama going negative like George W. Bush in 2004 or Jimmy Carter in 1980 is going to seal the deal for those folks. They are DYING to get this guy out of office, but don't want to publicly state their displeasure until Obama says or does something unsavory like constant attacks on Mitt Romney.

The problem with your analogy is that people actually liked Ronald Reagan. No one likes Mitt Romney.

[Meeker]

I love watching Republicans whine about these ads and say how they're mean and unfair. Now you know what the last four years have felt like for us.

[Meeker]

Meh. Obama was willing to try hope and change and bipartisanship when he took office. The other side responded by calling him a secret Muslim born in Kenya, saying that he wanted to create government panels to kill old people, and saying that he was trying to institute socialism. Pretty difficult to work together and find common ground with people who approach the situation with that sort of attitude.

[Meeker]

Not really. Obama started out of the gate as being a president for one side, not for the country. He saw his two majorities and took them for granted... he thought he didn't need to be a unifying president.  That sorta floundered when he could barely even pass Obamacare with those two majorities. Obama could've tried a little harder.

Oh yes, taking an idea (the individual mandate) that was thought up in a conservative thinktank and most famously implemented by a Republican Governor was definitely just being President for one side.

[Meeker]

Seems like the only Americans who were under that impression were partisan Republicans who wanted to use it as evidence of failure by their political opponent.

[Meeker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHPa_LZOM2s&feature=relmfu

This ad is, of course, a complete lie. The decision it references is one the Obama administration made - at the request of Republican Governors - to set up a system where states can apply for a waiver to figure out better ways to distribute TANF benefits. But the waiver system explicitly says the work requirement cannot be waived, and no waivers have been applied for or approved. So nothing has actually changed.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch, the editorial they cite, have themselves admitted that the claim is not actually true: http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2012/aug/20/new-romney-ad-pushes-debunked-claim-against-obama-ar-2142116/

But hey, black man is making welfare easier to get! Vote Romney!

[Meeker]

^^^ Probably what's most impressive about that ad is that it was up within an hour or two of Romney releasing the original ad (the one you see for a few seconds at the start). I wonder how many other response ads Obama has in the drawer just waiting for Mittens...