Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

A Really Bad Strategy

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(Cross posted. I tried to find a video but none is available yet. [Posted. -ed.])

Has anyone else seen the new ad by Karl Rove’s American Crossroads attacking Elizabeth Warren? I did, this morning, and all I could do was think: thanks, Karl Rove…?

The ad hits Warren about her support for the Occupy movement (and talking about her contribution to the seeds of the movement, the idea that the middle class and the American dream have been under attack, something Warren has been fighting against for decades). The ad labels the movement as socialist/radical/yadda yadda yadda.

Is Karl Rove aware that he’s running the ad in Massachusetts? I’m just wonderin’. Maybe he’s getting senile in his old age. And he is aware, I have to assume, of the polling that shows more Americans support Occupy than not? Or that 2/3rds agree that income inequality needs to be addressed and the system as it is is not fair? The numbers are likely a lot higher in MA, since, as we keep getting reminded (by the “red speck” who’s running for President, if nothing else) that our state is one of the most liberal in the union.

If I were Scott Brown, I’d beg Karl to please…stop helping.

Seriously, if what’s come out of the MA GOP, the Brown campaign, and the Republicans in general thus far is indicative of their future attack strategy…I am not going to say it’s cakewalk because nothing ever is and one’d be a fool to underestimate the underwear model…but geez. Make it a bit competitive at least!

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Comments

  1. the Rove ad’s line about how Occupy protesters “attack police” is pretty appalling in light of footage like this from the Berkeley protest. (HT Garrett.)

  2. I will also make the point that if Scott Brown wants to win a real term next November, he has to tack to the middle and look moderate, and divorce himself from the radical right. It’s his only chance. However, this goes in the opposite direction – and his campaign will be tarred with the same brush, as these sorts of ads go into the general mindset as “from the opposition” – they don’t make such distinctions as “oh that was an independent Karl Rove ad, and I’ll judge Brown accordingly.” That just doesn’t happen.

  4. Bay State voters are not so much smarter or better than those for whom this crap works, and the spot is reasonably well done for what it is.

    12 months of it will to some extent polarize and poison the debate in ways that may be good for Brown, who has plenty of plausible deniability meanwhile.

    Best antidote will be Warren herself.

      • You’ve got to be a complete wingnut to be afraid of OWS and the Far Left in Massachusetts.

        I’m sure there are a sizable number of voters that would like the Commonwealth to turn rather right, but this isn’t going to convince them. This is Free Republican, NewsMax stuff. There are enough knuckledraggers in the state for this stuff to work.

        The GOP needs to either split the unenrolled vote and add a good amount of Democrats to their base , or more than split the unenrolled with no Democrats. And this isn’t 2010 we’re talking about, and Elizabeth Warren isn’t Martha Coakley.

        • A lot of working people think its a bunch of unemployed spoiled college kids who have nothing better to do. I want to add that I support the aims of OWS, but recognize its not relevant to the average voter as of yet, we have to find some way to fuse old labor politics with the new populism fueling the OWS movement. I think Warren is the only Democrat who gets that and who knows how to do that so she is very threatening to the Rove figures. At this point I don’t think saving Brown matters much to the Rove types, its about defining Warren early so she does not become a national figure later down the road. He is being used as a sacrificial lamb so she can be pigeonholed as yet another radical MA liberal. It serves McConnell and company to have a Warren as a villain more than a mushy ally like Brown. Remember with Ted dead there are no bogeyman to run in ads, she would be the perfect foil. This is a test run folks, and they have already given up on Brown.

          • I want to add that I support the aims of OWS, but recognize its not relevant to the average voter as of yet, we have to find some way to fuse old labor politics with the new populism fueling the OWS movement.

            South Station, directly across from Dewey Square, is second only to Logan Airport in the amount of people it moves on a daily basis. That’s a lot of ‘average voter’ moving past the Occupy Boston people. If it’s not ‘relevant’ then it’s certainly tangent in a way that might force them to think and which could be made relevant in very short order.

      • I’ve lived here and I’ve lived in New Hampshire. Outside the cities (a big difference I will grant you) the people are not so different. Huge blocks of Central Mass. towns every bit as conservative and ideologically dumb as their brethren to the north.

        The big differences are historical and institutional. Our one-party legislature, their past decades of dominance by the Union Leader (disintermediated now, thank goodness, but not to be underestimated), our John Adams Constitution.

        Similarly, not really such a big difference between crunchy green Vermont and crusty NH. But one sends a Socialist to Congress. It’s history and institutions, not demographics.

        The Rove strategy threatens to hijack the debate into a shouting match that (over time) discredits politics, dispirits allies, and triangulates Brown into the “center,” part of his “moderate” mythos. I’m not saying it will work, just that it’s not stupid.

        • “aren’t,” and though I live in the Happy Valley of Western Mass, where I’m guessing education (as well as liberalism) runs above the state average, I don’t think the strategy will be effective. I think it was on NPR’s Political Junkie show that I heard that polls show unenrolled voters seeing GOP obstructionism for what it is. That’s a good sign for this contest.

          And as Hester Prynne’s recent post shows, it’s estimated that Middle-Aged Goodman Brown will need 430,000 more voters this time around.

    • And a skillful counter will shift the narrative to Brown as the candidate of Rove, the big banks and the reactionary status quo. OWS can play out a number of different ways so Warren has to maintain distance even as she uses it to highlight the public’s grievance with the Wall Streetisation of our economy.

      I do sometimes wonder if Warren may want to open up a new front at some point. She stays on message as crusader against special interests, but could highlight environment as means of showing Scott Brown as out of touch with Massachusetts and main street common sense- not just Wall Street. His green heresies are there for the picking.

  5. This aired in the morning while my twelve year old was having breakfast. So after I got done screaming at the TV, I went through the commercial point by point with him to explain why it was inaccurate, inflammatory and how we can’t always believe what we see in political ads. Also, why it’s important to educate ourselves, and how money can influence politics.

    I do agree, I think this is over the top for Bay State viewers. Sure, not all of them (I’ve heard the same ‘intellectual evidence v. real jobs” argument at expanded gambling hearings) but most. I hope.

  6. Just a reminder that the poll analysis was widely discredited as well, the quote about “radical redistribution of wealth”, it was a tiny 4% of those polled, not what Occupy is about if 96% said something else.

    Plus, this is all that Karl could come up with, talk about losing your fastball. What a completely pathetic attempt. How many votes does Scott lose with all this help?

    Occupy Wall Street Poll

    var docstoc_docid=”99818396″;var docstoc_title=”Occupy Wall Street Poll”;var docstoc_urltitle=”Occupy Wall Street Poll”;

  7. Arguably, one of the most brilliant political strategist in the last 20 years, you think is going senile?

    This election, like every election is Massachusetts, is going to be able who can win the most independent voters.

    But, you know, who really knows, perhaps there are enough Democrats and left leaning Indpendents that Warren can just bank on enough of them voting down the party line in 2012.

  8. …While I agree that this particular ad is pathetic, remember that it is only part of larger strategy: the rhetoric is likely to get more pointed, if not actually less extreme, as the election gets closer. You can bet that the authors of the ad are polling feverishly right now in order to determine what in this ad works to either A) energize right leaning voters and 2) or discourage left leaning voters.

    If this really is Rove behind this ad, then the next step will be to use the polling from this ad to find something to enable a ‘whisper campaign’ something that directly relates to her strengths (the ad punches most heavily on “theorizing” and “intellectual work”)… and Roves’ forte (sic) is to do so through college students: look for sub-rosa rumblings about “a cousin who took a class with a guy who was in her law class where she repeatedly arrived drunk” or something inane, but with enough plausibility to undercut her professorial standing…

  9. …of Karl Rove complaining that the “Tea Party” was misconstrued by people focusing on the most extreme elements? Plus, any complaints about people being out of work ought to be thrown right back in their faces. Any ad that starts, “14 million out of work” to me sounds like it’s going to be anti-GOP.

  11. You mean that aside from the Che Guevara thing, the worst sign they could find in any Occupy demonstration is “Wall Street is our street?” Really???

  12. he issued this statement today about outside ads. He’s probably talking more about the ones aimed at him, but still, he made the statement in the context of the Rove ad.

    “Outside groups should stay out of the Massachusetts Senate election. People are hurting. They’ve lost a job, or maybe their homes. Their incomes have declined,” said Brown. We need to focus on the very real issue of putting people back to work. I wish all these ads from outside groups would be taken down.”

    • … nowhere does he state that, with a phone call, he could end the involvement of ‘outside groups’. He is, after all, a United States Senator. That ought to count for something.

      • As I said above, I am of the opinion Brown did not fund this ad or have anything to do with it. He wants to be a moderate, Obamacare is bad not because it is socialist but because Romneycare is already working for us. He is trying to be a Weld law and order taxes low but abortions are ok kind of Republican and it isnt working. The goal of the Rove ads is to define Warren early and marginalize her, they already know she will win, they just want to make her toxic to other Dems and other Senators that might work with her so she is seen as a gadfly and not an agent of change. This is the last person Republicans want to run since she is the only candidate that can defy the false culture war and appeal to a much broader cross section of voters on economics. One of the few Democrats who can authentically be a populist.

  13. 1. Would love to hear it. I thought about it and couldn’t think of one.

    2. Your argument that it’s counterproductive rests on the current polling. The poll you linked to is about Occupy’s goals. Not Occupy itself. Other polls have a majority favoring Occupy itself, but the margins are much closer.

    The Rs are betting that will erode as time goes on. Who knows. Let’s say, for sake of argument, it does. If in 4 months the polling on Occupy protests is majority do not support, would you then think this is a bad ad?

    3. Can ads like this push public support for the protests down (ie, note clever move of embracing an Occupy issue — jobs — while rejecting protests themselves)?

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