It’s all part of the RR thing. See, people remembered how ‘optimistic’ Ronnie was and now the word optimistic must be associated with GWB at all costs. During the week of the funeral when Kerry laid off political ads, GWB was there saying “I’m optimistic about America”
Expect the ‘pessimist’ lable to be hurled at Kerry and GWB to go on about how optimistic he is.
And even though the Hitler is part of the banned move on ad the new ad is implying that Hitler is a member of the Democratic party. The ad starts with “The Faces of John Kerry’s Democratic Party – The Coalition of the Wild Eyed” .
I’ll be so glad when these fucktards get the heave ho.
MsRobyn, by now you’re doubtless aware that your assertion is facually incorrect. The Bush campaign was not comparing anyone to Hitler, but rather engaging in a (poorly executed) attempt to demonstrate what shrill assholes many democrats have become recently.
Speaking of shrill assholes and Hitler, Al Gore today referred to the people who respond to Democratic talking points as “digital brownshirts.” I eagerly await the text of your email to the Democratic National Committee encouraging them to distance themselves from Gore’s remarks and to bar him from their convention.
That ad is disgusting. I thought I’d become enured to dirty campaigning on both sides but that scrapes the bottom of the barrel.
I watched the video several times to see if the initial shock value obscured a finer point. Nope. It was still flat out, deliberately offensive. There’s absolutely no excuse for an established party to link their political opponents visually with the Third Reich on their official website. I don’t give a whoop what satirists and media critics may do. They come with the territory, even the vicious, unfair ones. Bush/Cheney have disgraced the Republican party by lowering themselves enough to run that crap.
That thumping sound you hear is Ronald Reagan rolling over in his grave. I sure didn’t agree with a lot the man did but he was never less than respectful toward those on the other side of the aisle. I just wonder what Bush1 thinks of it.
Not the time for rage and pessimism indeed. That ad surely wasn’t persuasive of anything other than hatred. Shameful.
Hmm. Not sure how I did it, but this post seems to be communicating precisely the opposite of what I wanted to say.
What I meant was, a few months ago, it was a big deal when a private individual submitted an ad comparing Bush and Hitler to a contest being run by a private (so far as I know) organization, it was supposed to be a big outrage. Now we have an ad apparently comparing Kerry to Hitler (although I think SolGrundy’s subsequent re-interpretation is probably correct) that is being shown on the webpage of the candidate itself, which would be actually is an outrage, and ha-ha-isn’t-that-ironic-in-an-Alannis-Morrisette-kind-of-way.
You are aware that the two situations are not really comparable, right?
On the one hand, we have the official site of the campaign using images of Hitler, to which she responds. On the other, we have a member of the Democratic party evoking Nazism, in response to which you suggest that she should call for that person to be banned from the convention.
The situations are not the same, and the response isn’t the same – saying “take this off your website and do not do it again” would be equivalent to emailing Al Gore and telling him not to do it again, not emailing the party he claims membership in and asking them to keep him out.
I realize you don’t agree with us Democrats politically, but can you at least try to be rational? When you’re this much of a kneejerk reactionary conservative, you sound like Reeder’s “Mirror Mirror” counterpart.
Shit, you’re stupid. The ad was an attempt to point out that it is the Democrats, not the Republicans, who are making comparisons to Hitler. And today, almost as if on cue, Al Gore did exactly that. Essentially he turned a poor ad, worthy of criticism, into something suddenly relevant and factually correct.
Well, I’m a little more cynical than that, buddy. You know I’m not some wild-eyed lefty here. My reasons for disliking Bush are largely economic in nature (I am an original deficit hawk) and not personal or ideological.
And I think, whatever the soi-disant justification for the ad is, the goal is to get the association out there in the minds of the voters democrat:Hitler. Even if it’s too disingenuous for us to believe just speaking as a marketer that’s the intent I’m picking up. Frequently I’ll have a piece designed less to make the apparent sale than to build customer association with my product. And that’s what I’m picking up here.
I can see why one would misconscrew the message. I happen to know about MoveOn.org, I caught the reference, so it was clear to me that they were accusing the Kerrycampers of Hitler-esque allusions. But they sure did a piss-poor job of it, clarity wise.
The title made me cringe a bit, the “wild-eyed” stuff, I thought, Oh, God, they’re not going to try and be funny, are they? Republican humor hasn’t changed much since Bob Hope’s dirty hairy hippy jokes, reaching its peak with tiresome jibes about Gore inventing the internet. They beat that dead horse into a puddle of glue.
I think maybe they started out to create a droll, ironic message, but the final version was designed by a committee of Republicans, whose humor range is mostly confined to gloating and sneering.
As to whether or not they’re “fighting dirty”, I can only hope that this is as bad as it gets. Won’t be, but I can hope that.
Congratulations. We are out of toaster ovens at the moment, can you take a raincheck?
Shit no, he’s not stupid. Try reading what was said before you resort to the name-calling.
No, the point of the ad on the Republican incumbent’s website was not to say that John Kerry=Adolf Hitler. It was to say that John Kerry=Michael Moore + Al Gore + whoever created an ad that was so ridiculous it was even rejected by a bunch of nutjobs like moveon.org. That’s not as reprehensible as making a direct comparison between your opponent and Hitler, but it’s still pretty reprehensible. It’s the weak Us vs Them approach of trying to discredit your opponent not based on anything rational, but by lumping them in with “The Enemy.” Like saying that the words of Al Gore are the words of the entire Democratic party.
That’s still a terrible and misleading ad. If even an extremist group like moveon.org can recognize that it’s a bad idea to put Hitler into your campaign ads, how come the political campaign for the current president of the United States doesn’t recognize the same thing?
What exactly is she supposed to “apologize” for? “I’m sorry, your ad didn’t compare your opponent to Hitler. It just showed repeated images of your opponent along with pictures of Hitler. My bad! You got my vote!”
Eh – I have no defense of the ad. It was bad. I see it a little differently in terms of how it got that way, though. I know the Republican activists were really upset about the moveon.org ads, even though they were and are the only non moveoners in the country to know about their existence. They threw it in there as part of the pile on, IMO.
Gore making it suddenly accurate was an unexpected bonus, though. The DNC sure as hell can’t complain about it now – the Republicans can respond by replacing the moveon footage with the new Gore footage and actually turn it into a good ad. Heck, with that revision, it might even qualify for a TV ad.
And thanks on the Ryan thing – I think it would have been very funny had I been smart enough to post it in, you know, a thread having to do with Ryan.
I don’t personally see this as much more than another sign of the generally dismal excuse for political debate that goes on in this country, as well as what appeears to be hilarious ineptitude on the part of the Bush re-election effort. Perhaps Kerry’s campaign is blundering just as badly, but have yet to see even a single ad from them. Regardless, I’d wish for the first Tuesday in November to come next week, if it I didn’t already know that all the partisan pinheads wouldn’t shut the fuck up even then.
Also, I’m curious: hands up anyone on this board who would actually admit to making a decision as to which candidate to select from the opposite party’s political ads, fer chrissake.
As far as I’m concerned, both parties are welcome to spend as much as they like on TV and radio time; I will simply ignore all paid political advertising, as I always do. I’ve got plenty of other sources for anything I think I need to know about the candidates.
I think I’m of a very similar political stripe a Veb, and yet I had exactly the opposite reaction. Go figure.
Sitting here in the middle (and believe me, living in upstate New York I have no clear choice), I’m starting to get turned off by the Democrats, mostly because of the company they keep. DemocraticUnderground and MoveOn have moved well out of the way of reasoned discourse, and into the realm of complete fruitbattery.
Seriiously, I’m starting to question the sanity of some of these people. Thanks mostly to some posters on this board I started fact-checking Michael Moore, and it turns out that he’s a liar. Worse, he’s a hippocrite. And then Al Gore went tripping off into the wide onknown of Screwyland with his “digital Brownshirts” crack. I’m seeing a hell of a lot of Bush=Hitler crap, and I’m not seeing any Democrats falling all over themselves to condemn it. I’m not sure if they even think they should. They have therefore pissed me off, and earned my eternal contempt. If you want to equate a 21st century political party with the Third Reich, you better make your peace with 30+ million dead souls, and then come talk to me.
You know what? I’m not voting in the presidential election this year. Bush has totally pissed me off, and I can’t vote to re-elect him.
But given Al Gore’s recent performances, I sure as hell glad that fucking loon isn’t sitting in the hot seat right now. And until I see some sign of sanity from the left, I’m not voting for any Democrat, either. I used to respect the Democrats. Hell, I used to be one. No more.
I’d send a correction, not an apology. The ads were removed, rejected, and condemned by the MoveOn contest’s organizers, and visitors to its website gave the ads low ratings. They were never sponsored, endorsed, or aired by MoveOn. And now that they’re long gone from MoveOn’s site, the only major political group still hosting the ads is Bush-Cheney '04, Inc. Why? The only reason to keep the ads alive is so the GOP can drag them out and smear every Democrat in the country because of the actions of two radicals.
