Unleash The Ads! And The Mud!

Greg Sargent's headline in today's Washington Post shocked me. It's completely accurate and totally precise but I had never seen the word "darkies" in a Post headline before. Herr Trumpf sure has done strange things to our country. Sargent says Trumpf's dark propaganda piece makes crystal clear how the fear-mongering demagogue wants to make America "great" again-- by making it white again-- and by keeping the darkies out. "Trumpism in all its xenophobic glory." It won't be on TV anywhere but in Iowa and New Hampshire (why not South Carolina? They'd love it there)-- except it 's already everywhere as "news." Watch it up top. So just when Reince Priebus is talking about how he believes Trumpf can win a general election, the Republican Party frontrunner is viscerally equating ISIS terrorists with Latino immigrants (invaders). Doesn't exactly play into the post-Romney RNC (now-shredded?) plans for 2016. Sargent is smart enough to know Trumpf isn't going to be able to beat Cruz for the nomination but is still asking the obvious question: "Wither the forces Trump has unleashed inside the GOP? Trump’s candidacy-- and to a somewhat lesser extent, that of Ted Cruz-- is framed around the idea that the way to win the White House is by unleashing the power of white backlash. This is plainly obvious in Trump’s case, but Cruz, too, has repeatedly suggested a GOP victory must be powered by evangelicals and “Reagan Democrats,” i.e., culturally conservative blue collar whites. Cruz has engaged in more sophisticated demagoguery about Muslims and has flatly ruled out any form of legalization for undocumented immigrants."

The ads released at the same time today by the other two campaigns flush with cash-- Cruz's and the Jebster's-- are tame yawn-fests compared to Trump's ominous red meat. Cruz is trying to make an appeal that goes slightly over the heads of the garden variety Trumpf fans:



And the Jebster ad is typical consultant-driven pablum, more about how media consultants can soak sucker candidates than about moving numbers with a message likely to connect with TV viewers. Jeb will spend millions on his ad (at the bottom on the page) and still wind up at the bottom of the pack with also-rans like Fiorina and Huckabee. Speaking of the also-rans, apparently this is their last chance to get in all the mudslinging before they start dropping out in serious numbers

Supporters of Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee are poised to unleash a wave of ferocious attacks this month, according to Republicans familiar with their planning, plunging the muddled contest into a multidimensional war in the weeks leading up to the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses.

“You’re going to see even sharper elbows” starting this week, said Jon Seaton, a Republican strategist not affiliated with any of the campaigns. “And by the middle of January, everybody will have their pads on and helmets buckled.”

By month’s end, the candidates and their allied groups could spend as much as $100 million combined, much of it on negative advertising delivered via television, radio, mailers and digital spots. And after the effectiveness of positive television commercials came under question last year when tens of millions of dollars failed to lift Mr. Bush, January will offer insights into whether attack ads still have the power they did in past presidential elections.

Before he rides off into the sunset, Santorum is trying to make the bizarre claim that Cruz isn't a conservative, just some kind of opportunistic poseur. "The fact that he’s out there calling people 'neocons' tells you that he doesn’t see himself as a conservative." And he and Huckabee are both hitting Cruz hard in Iowa as being someone who fights and always loses. I suspect neither is trying to bolster Herr Trumpf, but that's exactly what those kind of anti-Cruz missiles will do. Meanwhile Cruz, Bush and Christie are going to unleash the dogs of war on Rubio and beat him to a bloody pulp so that it becomes apparent he's the wrong choice for the all-important not-Trumpf lane. Funny how scared they all seem of the silly bully Trumpf, shaking in their cowboy boots that he will make good on his idiotic threats to "hit back" if anyone dares goes after him. These clowns are just so pitiful. How can any of them lay claim to being able to protect America in any way if they can't even protect themselves and their sad little party from Trumpf and his ism?