This ad will make it a lot easier for many independents and disgruntled formerly mainstream Republicans (people who admire the first President Bush and GOP stalwarts such as Barry Goldwater) who don’t like the people now in charge of the Republican party to cast protest votes on Election Day:
The Republican Party will begin airing a hard-hitting ad this weekend that warns of more cataclysmic terror attacks against the U.S. homeland.
The ad portrays Osama bin Laden and quotes his threats against America dating to February 1998. “These are the stakes,” the ad concludes. “Vote November 7.”
Brian Jones spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said the ad would run on national cable beginning Sunday, but he declined to discuss specifics of the buy.
The commercial tracks with Republican Party strategy to make the war on terrorism a central theme of this election. It will air as recent polls show Republicans losing ground as the party best able to combat terrorism.
On Election Day, if the GOP goes down to defeat, hopefully there will be serious people in the party who will purge the release of this kind of political bilge from future political campaigns.
There is a serious policy negative on this as well.
If there is indeed an authentic terrorist threat between now and Election Day, a large portion of the electorate will dismiss a government warning as political maneuvering by the Bush administration to bolster this campaign theme. If that happens and members of this Republican administration want to discover the cause of such cynicism, they might look in their mirrors.
You can’t create and sustain national unity on terrorism if you’re accusing a large chunk of the country as being enablers of terrorists.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.