The effective aggressiveness of the Romney campaign has been on full display this week, starting with Romney’s very wise decision not to jump in the media trap of repudiating Donald Trump all the way to yesterday, when Romney out-community-organized Team Obama by giving them a taste of their own heckle-medicine. The ad below, released yesterday by the RNC, is standalone brilliant, hitting and defining Obama with Solyndra. But there’s something larger at work that’s also worth mentioning.
Have a look:
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The most crucial component in the ad is that the RNC chose to use — with notable exceptions like CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson (a exceptional investigative reporter) — the corrupt, left-wing media as its message-deliverers. We’re not listening to some ominous voiceover reading off a script telling us that Obama poured millions of our tax dollars down an absurdly risky rathole. Instead, it’s Obama’s own Media Palace Guards — CNN’s John King and ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, telling us this. Also represented in the ad are CBS News and the L.A. Times.
It’s pretty obvious that the Romney campaign intends to make Solyndra a symbol, not only of Obama’s failed stimulus and squandering of our tax dollars, but also of the appalling crony capitalism that was such a part of it (one of Solyndra’s largest investors is a major Obama fundraiser).
In other words, what Obama wasn’t able to make stick to Romney with Bain, Romney intends to make stick to Obama with Solyndra — to define him as a reckless job killer who squanders our money for his own personal and political gain. And from where I stand, this is working, mainly because everything Romney is saying is 100% true. Which brings me back to the media.
The reason the use of the media is so crucial in this ad is that the Romney campaign obviously learned much from 2008 and therefore understands that, in order to protect Obama, the media has devised any number of ways to kill narratives damaging to Their Precious One. Phony fact-checkers like Politifact come to mind.
Politifact’s job is to kill narratives harmful to Obama by giving the corrupt media some phony reason to declare the criticism untrue. What usually happens afterwards is that the Republican is put on defense trying to prove he’s not a liar.
Well, it’s a little hard to do that when you have the media making your case for you.
Also, the media can simply choose to ignore attacks they know will stick to Obama. This was a classic tactic the media utilized quite effectively in 2008. But with this ad, the media will have to ignore themselves, which is awkward. Also, the rise of New Media over the last four years makes it much harder for the corrupt media to ignore legitimate stories. You can ask Elizabeth Warren about that.
Less than ten days ago, Obama said Bain Capital is what this election will “be about“. Yesterday, no less than former President Bill Clinton, husband of Obama’s own Secretary of State, completely and probably forever undermined the Bain line of attack by pronouncing Romney’s business record as “sterling.” And if you want any more proof that Obama is a very weak president, look no further than that.
And if you want any more proof that Romney intends to win, and that he understands the media threat and, thus far, has an effective and aggressive plan to out-maneuver them — watch that ad again.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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