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Worst Ad of the 2012 Campaign?
By
I know that's a big claim. And we've still got ten months of ad watching ahead! But this will certainly be a contender. It's allegedly from a Ron Paul supporter in New Hampshire.
Is this really from a Paulite? Or is it a dirty-trick reverse backflip meant to discredit Paul and perhaps build sympathy for Huntsman? Might it be from an unaffiliated, disgruntled- loner-style xenophobe? Or by someone making fun of disgruntled-loner xenophobes?
No explanation really makes sense -- after all, the common enemy of Huntsman and Paul in New Hampshire would seem to be Mitt Romney, or now Rick Santorum, rather than each other. But during this campaign it has been harder and harder to apply a "well surely that couldn't happen" common-sense standard to whether the latest weird allegation could be true. I thought the original "smoking man" ad for Herman Cain might have been an Onion parody. I still think the whole Trump campaign may have been.
Wherever it comes from, this ad has a breathtaking cheesiness and badness that deserve notice. The ten seconds starting at time 0:40 seem to be making an allegation even wilder than what's in the rest of the video. Thanks to longtime Atlantic staffer Chris Good, now of ABC, for the lead. And this is also an occasion to think back on the most memorable spot of the 2010 midterm campaign, the immortal Chinese Professor ad.
Is this really from a Paulite? Or is it a dirty-trick reverse backflip meant to discredit Paul and perhaps build sympathy for Huntsman? Might it be from an unaffiliated, disgruntled- loner-style xenophobe? Or by someone making fun of disgruntled-loner xenophobes?
No explanation really makes sense -- after all, the common enemy of Huntsman and Paul in New Hampshire would seem to be Mitt Romney, or now Rick Santorum, rather than each other. But during this campaign it has been harder and harder to apply a "well surely that couldn't happen" common-sense standard to whether the latest weird allegation could be true. I thought the original "smoking man" ad for Herman Cain might have been an Onion parody. I still think the whole Trump campaign may have been.
Wherever it comes from, this ad has a breathtaking cheesiness and badness that deserve notice. The ten seconds starting at time 0:40 seem to be making an allegation even wilder than what's in the rest of the video. Thanks to longtime Atlantic staffer Chris Good, now of ABC, for the lead. And this is also an occasion to think back on the most memorable spot of the 2010 midterm campaign, the immortal Chinese Professor ad.
