Well, I suppose we should not be surprised. My first reaction to yesterday’s poll number was maybe Rove might reconsider taking a role in the race in Massachusetts. I mean it really is not all that ridiculous to think it might be best to leave Brown to his own money and his own skills. I understand he is quite affable. (I personally found him to be a jerk, but that’s just me). I was wrong. Quite wrong.
Instead Rove is going whole hog in the other direction claiming that Warren is cozying up to…THE BANKS! I mean, really. I don’t even know how you could make that argument, much less believe it. However, as Digby notes, it is a blatant attempt to confuse low-information voters. I don’t know if it will work, but it certainly could confuse people.
Greg Sargent says that this ad is an admission that Warren is winning the larger fight on the issues and that folks like Rove need to recalibrate. This ad may be a diirect reaction to internal numbers probably not that far off from the recent Boston Herald poll. You can tell that there is a degree of shock among the conservative establishment that leads to playing down or downright wishful thinking like this tweet from Joe Battenfeld tweeted less than hour before the poll went public.
The question comes down to how to respond, though. I think it is fair to say that Warren’s first ad buy was a success, but it was almost certainly expensive, too. Does Warren shrug this off and just stay on message? Or should she punch back? The problem is if she does it may cost money better spent elsewhere. There is always the possibility that a PAC punch back, too.
Long term, I really do not think that this ad will have a huge effect on the general outside the the money any response may cost. I suppose this post is really about the temerity of Karl Rove, versus any damage the ad itself will do. I’m sure I’ll be getting a fundraising email from Warren and considering the fact that ad is practically slanderous, it may generate even more money than the Matriarch of Mayhem ad, which crushed Warren into 49% against Brown’s 42%.
Maybe its just astounding how people like Rove continue, knowing, KNOWING, that it is just as likely to produce a backlash of greater intensity than any net gain they hoped for. But just to be sure, give a low information voter a hug and tell them to never believe a Crossroads ad.
UPDATED: If you needed to actually read something to debunk the ad, Ari Berman has the takedown.
UPDATED PLUS: Even the Globe cannot resist, but takedown Rove’s absurd assertions.
Turn an opponent’s strength into a weakness. Remember the Swift Boats?
At least in that case, Kerry’s anti-war activism could be manipulated. This is beyond even that.
As unpleasant as it might be, this has proved to be a very, very successful tactic.
I wonder if Warren is better prepared for it than Kerry was.
and since. Obama was able to deal with Corsi easily – the first thing his team did was to point out that he also wrote the book smearing Kerry. The fact is to far more than half the country, swiftboating means attacking with lies. The fact that Guilliani accused people of swiftboating him showed that after it was over most people saw it for what it was.
When it first hit the Kerry campaign they did what should have worked – and would have worked even 10 years earlier. The first time the SBVT reared their ugly heads, he put his entire record (except medical) on his website and the media was given access to his medical records. When they reappeared, Kerry’s team gave the media a 36 page memo of provable lies in the book. The problem was that, in his case, the media opted to ignore that they challenged the official Navy record and that they provided absolutely no proof. The media played with the accusations giving the liars airtime long after they had any possible credibility. (Seriously, contrast this to what the Clinton war room did. They prided themselves in having a response – even is incomplete or later changed – in the same news cycle. In many cases, they did not refute the entire accusation – as Kerry did – with the official record backing him.
Note the similarity of the RW charge that he did not put out his records which continued even after he signed to let three papers get them directly from the Navy – to the RW STILL not believing Obama’s birth certificate.
Warren has two advantages – she is only running in Massachusetts and Rove’s methods are far better known.That this is labeled a “ROVE” ad in all accounts I have seen is also good – just that partially discredits it to most people who are reachable.
An ad that attacks Warren for being too close to Wall Street, that is mostly funded by…
…. wait for it…
….wait for it…
…. yeah, you get it
Greg Sargent is both right and wrong: Rove, or whomever, is not concerned, at this stage, with ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ but with softening up the independents and polling to see what will play in the last month; This ad is trawling for ideas to make ads for October of ’12.
In Dec of 2003, John Kerry was polling beneath Al Sharpton. In Dec of 2007 Hillary Clinton was consistently outpolling Barack Obama and, just as consistently, being outpolled by hypothetical Republican candidate John McCain while running neck-n-neck with hypothetical candidates Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney.
her accomplishments here before Warren is able to clearly do so in the next ads she does?
Her first ad defined her background very well. It would be natural if her next step is to define work – as what it really was and is. I wonder if their efforts over the last almost 6 months to define her as a leftwing extremist might make their new characterization likely to be rejected and to backfire.
It might backfire because it concedes she is not radical left and it really shows that she was given a tough job that she did quite credibly before being the force for consumer protection that insured it was included in the Dodd/Frank bill.
Interesting admission on their part.
Previously they had claimed it was caused by Barney Frank and the liberals who wanted homes for people who could not afford them.
Nobody is going to rap them on the knuckles for having different messages for different groups. Nobody who counts.
You are talking about people who are rebelling against Washington to install Newt Gingrich, for Pete’s sake.
Their minds may be small, but are remarkable free of hobgoblins.