Wednesday, June 28, 2006

PA-Sen The First Ads: Casey Talks, Rick Spews

Well, Bob Casey has unveiled what he's calling his first TV ad -- he wants a balanced budget, thinks giving tax cuts to multimillionaire is bad, thinks "giving corporations tax breaks for sending jobs overseas" doesn't make sense, and wants to lower interest rates. Unlike Santorum's first ad (pretentiously named, "Candles") Casey doesn't attack his opponent. It's a typical (yawn) Casey ad -- he talks, doesn't say a whole lot, but stays on substantive issues without taking Rick's bait. It has very nice production values.

Rick's first radio ad after the primary went negative(May 22 - named "Again"), attacking Casey on that whole faux incident at Rick's faux home. If Rick had just ended his first ad when he finished speaking and not appended the smear and lies attacking Casey (and Ted Kennedy), it would have been a fine and honorable ad. (And, listen, I don't know Ted Kennedy, Ted Kennedy isn't a friend, but even from 3,000 miles away, I can see that Bobby Casey is no Ted Kennedy.)

Let's hope that Casey doesn't stoop to conquer. Let Rick sputter and spew his venom with his ever-decreasing base cheering the spittle.

UPDATE: AlexC, the editor of the Santorum Blog, has pointed out that the Santorum TV Ad that I referred and linked to is probably a web-only ad.

That looks to be the case (I've never seen the ad on TV, since I only watch TV in sports bars to see the Yankees games). If so, then Rick did what I said he should have done -- ended the TV spot when he finished speaking. The swipe at Casey was apparently limited to his website version. (Although, I received the link from a Santorum Campaign e-mail touting the new TV ad.)

Well, okay, I understand "red meat" for the rabid base. I still don't like it, and objected to the same kind of thing in a recent campaign that I in which I was involved, but it isn't as egregious as doing it in your TV and radio spots.

4 comments:

A Big Fat Slob said...

Right after the language that you quote, an announcer comes on and says that "Rick Santorum is leading the fight to stop Bobby Casey and liberals like Ted Kennedy from giving amenesty and special tax breaks those who've entered our country illegally ...." -- over images of people scaling banks and trucks carrying people, etc.

That was the unnecessary attack part. I had no problem with the legitimacy of the first part, which you quoted.

A Big Fat Slob said...

If that's the case, then I guess what I was referring to was not the TV ad (not being a TV-watcher, I haven't seen the commercial).

However, on June 23 I did received an email from the Santorum Campaign inviting me to "Watch Rick's First Ad" and the link took me to the one with the tagged-on announcer.

If he just ran the "clean" version on TV, then good for him -- it's a "fair" advertisement. I tend to discount web-based ads since they are usually only red-meat for the true believers.

However, that is changing. As we have seen over the last few campaigns, web-only ads can get significant play in the media.

Okay, so I guess the upshot is that Rick was not negative on his first televised ad.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Gort said...

So when will the mud start flying? I give it until next week.

A Big Fat Slob said...

I didn't think anyone from your area would be in the mood to talk about mud today . . . you could have enough of your own mud to deal with tomorrow . . .