As I frequently note on these pages, I don’t have a TV so I don’t have a good sense of what quality political advertising looks like these days. To my untrained eye and ear this one seems flat. People might argue that “McCain=McSame” is a catchy phraselet. To me, it’s as catchy as this—yes, it gets stuck in my head, but I resent it being there.
But putting those quibbles aside, what struck me about the ad was its use of Photoshop as the main metaphor of the ad. Does your average person know that there are programs which allow you to select parts of images and cut them out? That transparency is denoted by a black and white checkerboard design? Yes, the ad gets its message across just fine, but couldn’t they have used a metaphor more immediately recognizable to a wider range of people?
McCain is courting Huckabee. He threw his delegates to him in West Virginia to spitefully thwart Romney, the candidate of the Republican establishment. During his victory speech, McCain warmly congratulated Huckabee on his unexpected successes and cooly mentioned Romney only as an afterthought. Could it be that the establishment Right’s hatred for McCain is only matched by McCain’s hatred of movement conservatives?
In a rambling essay, unfocused even by her standards, Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review hints at this dynamic:
If you want the base to work for you, Senator, it’s most important that you be honest. Don’t try to remake the conservative movement; don’t pretend to be someone you’re not. When you speak to conservatives, play it straight: You don’t listen to Rush. You’re not comfortable at the Family Research Council. Don’t pretend otherwise.
I don’t think McCain’s pretending about anything—he’s very much trying to remake the conservative movement. He’d like to do an end-run around these self-appointed gatekeepers and use his “maverick” status to connect with Republican-leaning independents in a big way.1 Pairing with Huckabee would get him the support of the religious working class without having to kow-tow to the likes of James Dobson. It’s a win all around!
Even if this is his strategy, it may not play out like that. The pressure will be enormous on movement organs2 to align behind McCain. They may ask for some symbolic gestures and commitments from him in exchange for their backing. The pressure will then build on McCain to mend fences in order to increase his chances against a very strong Democratic candidate.
But we’ll see. McCain is old and prickly and stubborn—and liable to be spiteful just because he can. He might think that realigning the Republican Party to his outlook is more important than getting elected. Or he might just enjoy marginalizing all the enemies he’s made during his years in office.
Who said that the Democratic race was the exciting one to watch?
Anyone who pisses off that noxious gasbag Limbaugh and his ilk has to have some excellent qualities, right? ↩
