This is a question that, I regret, I must ask in a somewhat inarticulate way.
Having sat down and watched TV seriously for the first time in weeks, I am struck - STRUCK! - by how many political ads there are. (My state’s primary is coming up soon.) All of these are negative ads - I saw several blasting Newt Gingrich.
My question is, whichever candidate wins the primary, is he going to be hampered by the legacy of these negative ads? Does the Obama campaign simply have to put them up on Youtube and repeat what’s already been said? Will a victory this Pyrrhic make it impossible for a Republican to carry the general election, even moreso than it already was?
These adds are effective because they push up a candidate’s negative ratings. More negative adds means more people who are unlikely to vote for that candidate. I’ve heard some talking heads saying that this is a problem for Romney. (an example) His unfavorability numbers are high.
However, lets not forget that primaries are state affairs. I live in Swing State Central (the Pittsburgh television market includes parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia) and they aren’t showing campaign ads here. If Romney can sew up the nomination soon before the primary hits more swing states he can limit the damage.
The problem for Republicans is that, with YouTube, etc., these ads don’t stay in a given state, nor are they limited to the time before the primary. People record them and put them on the web. Once it’s on the web, the most herculean effort can’t pull it back.
This is only a problem for the Republicans right now, since the Democrats have the incumbency and therefore have no real primary opponents, but in the future it could bite the Democrats.
I doubt the electoral significance of Youtube or anything else you have to seek out yourself. Unless uncommitted voters are out scouring websites for political information in large numbers that I’m not aware of, what counts is info you can put in front of their eyeballs while they are going about their day. A worry for Romney though is that Democratic PACs might show bits of GOP attack ads in their own commercials and say, “Members of his own party say…”
Of course - but wait until the [del]money[/del] free speech focuses on Obama and his socialist/anti-American exceptionalist/crony capitalist/Big Government/higher taxes/anti-energy policies get put through the wringer.
Okay, this I just can’t wrap my head around: socialist AND crony capitalist? How can the people spouting this, even Palin and her cronies, reconcile these two polar opposites?
And YouTube makes those clips more easily available to Democratic PACs.
Also, while people may not seek them out, they will see them if, for example, FaceBook friends post links to them. People are shifting more and more of their time from TV to things like FB. Lots of people spend a lot of time FaceBooking on their smart phones.
I do think this could become a significant factor in the future, if not now.
They change what they spout, depending on their audience. It was a lot more feasible to do this in the past, when a given speech was mostly seen only by the immediate audience. That’s changing now, and they’re more easily caught in their contradictions. They haven’t quite adapted to that change yet.
Perhaps modern communications and social networking will force them to be more honest, or at least more consistent.
I don’t see the primary being a negative for Romney going into the fall. The GOP faithful have one and only one goal in their lives, to get Obama out of office. If Satan put an ® after his name, he’d get 40% of the vote. That 40% are the ones that forward all of the anti-Obama chain emails to you, you know- the ones that are debunked with regularity on Politifact and Snopes. Truth simply does not matter to these people.
I think it really comes down to whether the candidates throw something at each other that actually sticks. See, for example, “Obama is a secret Muslim”.
At this point, it seems pretty clear that voters are willing to buy the narrative that paints Romney as an out-of-touch trillionaire. It’s less clear whether they are willing to buy the one that paints Newt as a cancer-patient-divorcing hornball (at least among South Carolina Republicans).
After all, last election, Obama was a Muslim who was tainted by the words of his Christian pastor.
He was a socialist-communist, and at the same time compared to Hitler
If folks could hold these two ideas in their heads simultaneously, a socialist-capitalist would be a piece of cake, especially for those who don’t even know what those words mean.
The way I see it there are two potential bad outcomes of a negative campaign.
You so effectively demonize each other that the base becomes dissatisfied with the choices and enthusiasm wanes.
You drive up both candidates negatives with the voter pool.
I see some evidence that both of these outcomes are happening in this primary - more so than what happened in 2008 when both Hillary and Obama maintained both reasonable approval number and the Democrats maintained a high level of satisfaction and enthusiasm with their choices.
The problem there was that McCain didn’t fire back with polls asking if it was acceptable to vote for a drunk, drug-taking draft dodger for President. Slime doesn’t work as well when your opponent has the money to slime you back.
Simple: Socialism and crony capitalism are both bad, therefore they’re the same thing. These people live in a world containing only two things, Good and Evil. America is good and Christianity is good, therefore America is Christian. Abortion is evil and gays are evil, therefore gays have abortions. America is good, and both Nazis and Communists fought against America, therefore Germany and Russia were allies in World War II. I’ve heard my father advance all of these arguments.
