We got a decent amount of traffic this morning on the embed of Rick Perry’s new web ad which hammers President Obama’s economic record.
The ad, in case you haven’t seen it and don’t want to hit the link…
We noted this morning that the ad was reminiscent of the Tim Pawlenty ad from a while back which looked like a trailer from The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor or Transformers or one of the other Michael Bay movies. This was the Pawlenty piece from back in January…
They look pretty similar, though the Pawlenty ad definitely lacks the edge Perry’s has. The Pawlenty one is good, but it’s cheerleady, whereas the Perry ad conveys a major sense of urgency even if you don’t pay attention to the TORNADO SIREN in the background.
Turns out that both ads were done by the same guy. Pawlenty’s videographer Lucas Baiano didn’t go with him to the Romney camp; Baiano jumped over to Perry. This is his first shot in the new gig.
The Perry ad has also gotten a good bit more reaction than Pawlenty’s did. From John Hinderaker at Power Line…
This new campaign video by Rick Perry is very, very good. It sets, I think, a new technical and aesthetic standard that other campaigns (most of all President Obama’s) will have to try to match.
At Ann Althouse’s site, they’re running a poll on it…
Some of the comments were pretty interesting as well…
Dustin said…
Jobs jobs jobs.
There’s Perry’s campaign in a nutshell.
It’s the main argument that will sway independents and undecideds to Republicans instead of to Obama’s dishonest ‘I will take rich people infinitely and you will get lots of goodies and it will just work because rich people have infinite money and aren’t you!!!’.
Perry brings something others cannot to this job creation concept: a real record. He has a simple refrain to any attack on him, unlike his competitors.
He is not perfect or ideologically pure, but at least he stands by his mistakes instead of pretending he changed his mind.
That means he actually is telling the truth about his core views, and can be expected to be conservative on spending at a key time where real reforms are possible if and only if the GOP is not led by an establishment candidate who actually LIKES the K street system.
And I Don’t Really Like Perry. That’s what I like about him. I don’t want another cult of personality. I think those are unhealthy and I think Perry is at no risk of having one.
And…
oldhoya said…
It’s morning in America and there’s a bear in those woods, baby.
If and when Rick Perry reaches the pomposity of ordering the oceans to recede, framed by Greek columns, Obamites can talk about style versus substance issues. Until then, let those right legs tingle…
And…
Fred4Pres said…
I was pleasantly surprised. Good ad. Takes the fight where it belongs. As Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D) said, the Democrats own this economy.
Another…
sorepaw said…
I find it a bit over the top, but it makes Barack Obama out to be the Regressives’ Herbert Hoover.
And Obama can’t get around that, or past it.
And one more…
Richard Dolan said…
Everyone (including his Rep opponents) want to tag Perry as a dangerous, superficial flake. This ad counters that image with its opposite. The ad works at several levels, in framing the choice, not an echo, that would be presented if Perry is the Rep nominee. Obama = a proven failure who’s “just gettin’ started” (scary thought); Perry = successful, take-charge military guy, sensible not scary.
Nice ad, not great but effective.
A little more reaction, this from Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey…
Substantively it’s a bit weak; I’d have expected Perry to toss in a few statistics about job creation in Texas, especially with a video titled “Proven Leadership.” He has plenty of time to make that argument, of course, and this is a good introduction to the campaign’s central theme — and a good demonstration of how tough Perry will be on Obama in a general election, assuming he gets the nomination. Notice the emphasis on “President Zero”?
Perry’s opening bump in the polls is starting to dissipate a little, but he still holds a lead on Romney. Those polls didn’t mean a whole lot in the first place, other than to show that the existing candidates when Perry got in simply hadn’t closed the deal with the public and Perry looks a lot more like that magic-bullet candidate than the folks in the race. He got hurt a little on immigration and he took a hit on Gardasil, but it looks like he positioned himself well for the long haul on jobs and Social Security – which means that while the race appears to be narrowing, one thing that appears clear is that Michele Bachmann, who was Perry’s most strident critic on the Gardasil thing, slit her own throat with that attack. Bachmann has all but fallen out of the picture; the latest poll by Rasmussen has her behind Newt Gingrich now.
Which means that while she may have opened the door on Gardasil attacks where Perry is concerned, clearly her “I just met somebody whose kid get retarded because of Gardasil” way of going about it was a loser. So her next move is now to go after Perry’s wife, on the basis that Anita Perry used to be a lobbyist for Merck 15-20 years ago. Except that Anita Perry gave up that job so as not to have a conflict of interest.
Somebody else might be able to pick up this ball and run with it. The problem, though, is that while there are conservative ideologues who will find the whole thing to be a negative for Perry, moderates are probably more likely to find him acceptable because he tried to do something to promote public health and they don’t expect purity from their candidate. And a lot of others who might even be hard-core conservatives just don’t think it’s that big a deal, because after all we vaccinate kids against things like polio and measles and studies show Gardasil is pretty safe.
The way the Gardasil thing might really have some legs is if it’s part of a demonstrable pattern of big-government activity on Perry’s part. So far, no such pattern has been shown, which means Perry might point to Gardasil and say something like “the reason you guys are making a big deal about this is it’s more or less the only time I’ve governed like a Democrat. It’s like an exception that proves the rule, especially since when the state legislature made a stink about it I ended up backing down.”
Just doesn’t look like a big deal.
Immigration might be a tougher sell for Perry with conservatives, though again, his history of trying to – and this is me shilling for Perry here, even though I’d like to see him find an artful way to take a harder line on illegals – make chicken salad out of chicken something-else where it’s concerned could actually help him steal support away from Romney and win the argument on electability the Romney people like so much.
Why? Because Perry can bring the Hispanic vote. After all, he picked up an endorsement a week or so ago from Brian Sandoval, the governor of Nevada who is of Latin descent. And a Republican who can turn out the Latino vote will absolutely stomp a mudhole in Obama. White people aren’t voting for Obama anymore; his numbers are absolutely disastrous with people of pallor and there’s no reason that will change – particularly if he’s going to continue this far-left “soak the rich” business. All that will do is drive people further to the right, regardless of what some of these cooked-up polls Democrat pols constantly cite which say the American people can’t wait to sink their teeth into fatcats and drain their blood.
And then there’s the Romney campaign’s reaction to the Perry ad, which is laughable…
“In his campaign’s latest video, Governor Perry criticizes President Obama for an economy that added zero jobs in August, yet Texas added even fewer and has over a million people unemployed,” said Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul in a statement. “This election is about choices – and voters will have the opportunity to choose between Mitt Romney, a conservative businessman, or Rick Perry, a career politician whose own state’s unemployment rate has doubled on his watch and is the worst in the region.”
Mitt Romney is a “conservative businessman?” The guy has spent the last nine years as a politician. Herman Cain is a conservative businessman; Romney was governor of Massachusetts, for crying out loud. Say this Perry ad is over the top if you want, but let’s not cut Romney any slack over that whopper.
Baiano needs, for his next project, to do an ad which satisfies Morrissey’s concerns about substance. He’s got to come up with something compelling touting Perry’s record in Texas and vision for the country in more specifics than the first one did. But it’s a good start with a nice edge to it.
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