To some extent, this one is pretty bad though. Romney killed my wife by shutting down my plant that was losing money is pretty absurd even for a political ad.

Is it a fair ad if Bain made money on the deal?

If you hate capitalism I suppose.

Fair is completely irrelevant in this context. Effective is really the only question... and mebbe? Probably nothing huge.

I think the ad is a lot more effective as a plug for Obamacare than an attack on Bain or Romney. The pandering stuff is actually kind of insulting to me. But like some have said, I'm not the target audience.

Yes, I definitely hate capitalism, you caught me.

A better Romney, the one that actually created Romneycare and who defended safety net programs as a way to deal with the individual hardship that comes with capitalist creative destruction, would be immune to this sort of thing. The Romney that got the nomination deserves every last unfair second of that spot.

ikesdeflect - ACTIVATE!!!

No.

I really hate when the left (hello Michael Moore) acts like corporations should exist to provide welfare for their employees. That's the role of government, not industry. Don't fault Romney because his money making operation made money. Fault him because he doesn't support programs that help pick up the pieces when necessary but damaging decisions are made. (and I think you can make that argument with a slightly more sophisticated version of that ad).

Right but independents don't want sophistication. They barely pay attention to politics and don't understand global business operations at all. They just know they don't like outsourcing.

Romney is LOL running ads that proudly trumpet that he balanced the budget ALL four years he was Governor.

Hey sounds like someone else I know suzzer.

The thing that makes an advert like this so effective is the fact that human learning is very prone to source misattribution errors. So pretty much everyone is initially going to be like "Hmm this Obama ad is claiming Mitt romney fired this guy and took away his wife's health insurance, but really it was just that the company was going bankrupt... they are probably distorting this" and then they go on with their life and probably forget about it.

But then a couple months later when Mitt says something stupid or looks out of touch, they are going to think to themselves "O yeah, didn't this guy like fire some dude whose wife had cancer?" But they will have very little idea where this thought came from, and will end up assuming it was from a trustworthy source.


On the other hand, I think the government healthcare angle is a really good more subtle point that we will see getting brought up in ads for the rest of the cycle. Lots of people (including GOP voters) can identify with getting put in tough places related to healthcare/insurance. For example, I know several conservative families who had a kid in their 20s have to drop out of college for medical related problems and now are reluctant to vote romney because they are afraid an obamacare repeal would take away the up to age 26 insurance clause from their kids who now have a pre-existing condition. They would never vote Obama, but I bet some of these folks will stay home on election day. Ads like this help to keep that situation in their minds.

But his money making operation made money on this deal primarily by saddling the company in the commercial with $125M debt it could not repay.

The problem is that this isn't debate club, it's a TV spot. TV spots are judged on how effective they are. This for example, is a completely unfair but brilliant ad:



The funny part to me is how many people here talked about how high minded the dems supposedly were.... which was and is obvious BS. It's politics, it's dirty, it's what we're stuck with.

Are we down to QQing about dirty campaigns?

The Drinking game could be epic.

If The Donald says "Obama--you're fired!" drink a shot of PGA. Last one to finish must send a drunk text/email to their boss.

Does anyone here think that the Romney campaign is out-performing the Obama campaign?

It's virtually impossible to look at these things objectively -- without regard to one's preferences - but it seems to me that the conventional wisdom is that the Romney campaign has been the less effective/well run of the two.

lol you would

They've allowed Obama to not only control but dictate and dominate the narrative. FFS RMoney is in a pissing match with Harry Reid. Yes, RMoney's team is getting obliterated.

He doesn't post ITF but one of my buddies is convinced RMoney is going to dominate. All he has to back this up is the Ras polls which he will reference repeatedly if you discuss politics with him. He is 110% sure Romney is going to crush.

ETA: Looking at RCP it seems Ras has Obama up atm.

I'll add that I think that much criticism of campaigns is unfair, and fails to account for factors that are really out of the control of the staff (and candidate). But trying to play the role of disinterested pundit for a moment, it looks to me like the Romney campaign has much less of a coherent plan, and has been caught more frequently making unforced errors.

Aren't lots of Republicans saying that Romney's campaign is bad?

Obama has a masterful team from what I've read. Of course, they won, so maybe that's why they were looked at so masterful.

If McCain would have won, they'd have said the same thing I guess. Axelrod and Plouffe were beasts though.

The amazing part of all this is how inept the Dem party has been with regards to political strategy...but they seem to be firing on all cylinders (except maybe for that ******ed you didn't build it speech) this election cycle.

They are playing the game in a way that Karl Rove would be proud of.

The only thing I can hope for as a supporter is that the Romney camp had a plan for all that money is has raised and that plan will be effective. The money is really the main basis for my hope. Not just its effectiveness but the relative ease in which he is raising it makes me believe that he is convincing moneyed interests that he can win.