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Chrysler's campaign to convince Americans how great it was that automaker got bailed out has the side effect of helping the man who did the bailing: President Obama. Republicans' gloomy message -- that the U.S.A. is toast if we don't stop Obama's socialist economic policies, like bailouts -- only works if the economic news stays gloomy. The president's campaign is clearly enjoying what is essentially a trailer for the economic recovery in which Republican manly man Clint Eastwood echoes themes Obama has talked about for years. It's fitting that the ad would air hours before posting of the latest issue of The Weekly Standard, in which Bill Kristol, in a mild panic, writes that Bill Clinton's slogan "It's the economy, stupid" has lulled certain presidential candidates into thinking the economy's the only thing worth talking about.
The economic disaster movie image the Republican presidential candidates have painted all year (see: Mitt Romney's photo ops in abandoned factories) was captured in the beginning of a Saturday Night Live sketch from this weekend that imagines Newt Gingrich's as President of the Moon. In a Star Wars-style intro to the 2014-set scene, we learn: "Obama no longer hides his socialist agenda. The unemployment rate skyrockets and foreign armies gather their forces for an attack. Chaos reigns. But from the darkness, a visionary emerges..."