I recognize a cheap shot when I see one. That’s why my post about the latest ad from Priorities USA was entitled Have a Groin Shot. But I also pointed out that Mitt Romney wouldn’t have done a thing to help that man get cancer treatment for his wife even if he had been directly responsible for her predicament. Contra DougJ, I don’t celebrate that ad because it shows that we’re willing to fight fire with fire. The only thing I’ll say in the ad’s defense is that we take attacks like that all day long from hate radio and Fox News and the rest of the Mighty Right-Wing Wurlitizer, and I don’t see Anderson Cooper getting his knickers in a twist about that too often.
The factual liberties in that ad are actually a bad idea because it makes it a lot easier to make the “both-sides-do it” argument. The inaccuracies are unnecessary. And if you don’t think his story packs enough punch when told straight, find someone else whose story requires less tweaking. The Bain Capital story doesn’t require any embellishment or exaggeration, so we shouldn’t undermine the power of our message with embellishment and exaggeration.
Here is the real story. Regardless of how many people Mitt Romney laid off when he owned Bain Capital, when he was the governor of Massachusetts he thought that no one should die because they didn’t have employer-provided health care. And he did something about it. But he has totally disavowed that philosophy. So, decisions made by Bain Capital cost a man his job and his health care, which ultimately meant that his wife delayed seeing a doctor and didn’t have any insurance when she found out that she was sick with cancer. Romney had a solution for that problem when he was governor, but he has no solution for that problem now.
His new motto is “tough luck,” which is the same as his original motto. If we stick with that storyline, we’ll win this election without having to make any distortions of any kind.
I am not opposed to fighting dirty when your opponent acknowledges no rules, but I don’t like fighting dirty when fighting clean is even more effective.
“And if you don’t think his story packs enough punch when told straight, find someone else whose story requires less tweaking. “
Yup. Should have been a piece of cake to find a good story in say, Massachusetts, and then ask: what happened to Mitt Romney?
Seems the ad you don’t like actually turned out to be more effective than the theoretical one.
Other than the pure, ugly, empirical truth that this ad provoked a gross error from Romney, it brings up the fact that health care is a life and death issue. It seems impolitic to bring it up, but people — many people — just die because they do not have adequate health care. The media conversation centers around funding, doctors, effects on the economy, but very rarely is the question asked, and pressed, what do we do with people who are going to die without health care? The Republican answer is, “Let them.” Maybe that’s why the question isn’t asked.
I actually feel bad for Romney. Despite leaving his dog on the roof, he seems to have more compassion than the entirety of the party he is putatively leading.
Romney has as much compassion as a hamster.
how dare you insult poor innocent cuddly hamsters that way. What did they ever do to you? Chomp your finger when you squeezed them too hard?
As much compassion as a Komodo Dragon. In fact, reading the Komodo’s dietary habits on Wikipedia:
“Although they eat mostly carrion, they will also ambush live prey with a stealthy approach. When suitable prey arrives near a dragon’s ambush site, it will suddenly charge at the animal and go for the underside or the throat….Komodo dragons eat by tearing large chunks of flesh and swallowing them whole while holding the carcass down with their forelegs….A Komodo dragon may attempt to speed up the process by ramming the carcass against a tree to force it down its throat, sometimes ramming so forcefully that the tree is knocked down.”
Sounds like the Bain business plan.
ya know what? I don’t give a rat’s ass about needing to “tweak” the story. Like all good stories, it points out a central fact. In this case, that Health Care is essential for quality of life in one of the richest countries on earth.
Tweaking? To create a phrase that is totally based in reality: “Those grapes are sour”
… it makes it a lot easier to make the “both-sides-do it” argument.
That argument is going to be made REGARDLESS of what ads Dem PACs run.
So perhaps Romney wasn’t at the helm of Bain when this story unfolded. But he built the Bain life-destroying machine, and it was running just as he designed it to run.
Oh yes: “HE BUILT THAT”.
This ad is just a start, there’s more stories out there, and I hope they get told.
That argument is going to be made REGARDLESS of what ads Dem PACs run.
Second this. Would we be familiar with the “both sides do it” horseshit – before ever running an ad like this – if it hadn’t been made spuriously ten million times?
That’s really a bogus argument for several reasons.
Should you murder your annoying neighbor just because you know that someone plans on accusing you of murdering your annoying neighbor?
If your parents falsely accuse you of using drugs, should you go out and use drugs?
But, more to the point, there are two elements to this that really matter.
In conclusion, we lost more than we gained by letting the ad go so far over the top. It wasn’t necessary and it biased the referees against us without adding anything to what was a fairly decent story.
OK, I’ll concede this.
Completely agree! It matters not at all that Romney wasn’t at the helm of Bain when this story unfolded.
Romney didn’t just build the “life-destroying machine” at Bain; he continued to profit from it during the time this happened.
Is there anyone who can say with a straight face that Romney has a problem with what happened to this family or any of the other people whose lives were destroyed by Bain?
Does anyone know it it’s actually true that Bain was funded, at least in part, by blood money?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/08/mitt-romney-death-squads-bain_n_1710133.html?utm_hp_ref=mos
tpopular
Point of ad: Business decisions have consequences. Failing to consider those consequences or considering them and not caring shows the character of the business. And the character of the person who shaped the founding of the business. If experience means anything in a campaign for a government position, and especially if that position is President of the United States, it is a view into the values that the businessperson brings to his/her decisions. The mindless profit-grabbing at any cost that Bain engaged in has human consequences that Bain should have considered. Consequently Romney cannot use his experience at Bain as an argument for why he should be President. It is clear that he would loot and offshore the United States government without consideration of human beings if he could get away with it.
Romney campaign’s response: Tough luck. You weren’t lucky enough to have Mitt Romney as governor of your state.
Romney position: I’d make sure on the first day of my Presidency that even if they moved to Massachusetts, they could not get affordable health care insurance.
As your title indicates, everything else is just pearl-clutching.
Pearl-clutching can have consequences too, though, if the ad in question is sufficiently flawed in how it appeals to those still persuadable in this election cycle, and the perceptions it creates.
I’d put this ad on the same shelf of Dem messaging that gets unfairly compared with all the distortions and outright lies that the GOP routinely produces without a shred of outrage. It is a mildly deceptive ad in that the time frame is compressed in the narrative to the point that you get the idea the man got fired and lost his benefits, and then months later his wife died of an undiscovered and untreated cancer.
It’s well and good to point out the intended message of the ad, but 1) it wasn’t produced for you and me, and 2) intentions have no value when the ad produces a contrary perception.
Anybody in the pro-Obama camp producing ads that only preach to the choir is wasting their time and money at best, and worse, possibly damaging the campaign with swing voters.
I wish folks would be this concerned about all the lies in all the Karl Rove and Willard ads.
I see nothing wrong with this ad. I really don’t.
and, the power of this ad is obvious…they wouldn’t be squealing like they are.
Here’s the coup de grace, no?
http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2012/08/mitt_romney_founded_bain_capit.php
it seems to me that it goes to the heart of one of the biggest rightwingnut lines of BS — that they are the party of personal responsibility and accountibility, as well as the champions of the apathy that underlies their collective “tough shit” attitude they think somehow allows them to make like Pontius Pilate in the human misery arena.
There are no doubt an untold number of horror stories and victims to be found in the Chronicles of Mutt, and all teling the same story about the price they paid as a result of his vulture capitalism. Had the example been one about a loss of limb instead of a life in any way effected “the ending” he has responsibility for creating? Oh the drama of a death as opposed to a mere…
I’m not sure what you specifically mean by “factual liberties”, unless you’re talking about the omissions like her having health care coverage of her own. The only one I took exception to reading the transcript of it, was his thinking and asserting that the Mutt “doesn’t understand”. That gives him the benefit of a doubt he neither earned nor deserves. Obviously he understands, he just doesn’t give a shit. That’s what they don’t want to take responsibility or be held to account for.
And as far as it lending any credence to the “both sides do it” meme, the rightwingnuts will ALWAYS maintain a sizable lead in the frequency and egregiousness department, so you might as well be comparing lefty v righty domestic terrorists.
And finally, “when he was the governor of Massachusetts he thought that no one should die because they didn’t have employer-provided health care. And he did something about it.” differs little from what the man in the ad had to say. That’s your interpretation of events that does the opposite of what he intended to do, and assigns noble intent to the Mutt while totally ignoring his record of being a political opportunist that would undermine that case, much as it is being contended the omissions in his timeline did his. ANd you have far more time than an ad uses..
Sadly, his “Personal Responsibility Principle” behind the mandate http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TTByvLtYIYA reveals both their selective use of the principle, as well as his addiction to political expediency that currently has him flip-flopping like a detoxing alcoholic. He’s simply not credible enough and his apathetic nature is far too deeply etched in the public stone for his effort on Romneycare to be given the “look at what the good guy did” framing. Mitigation factors are the last thing I’d be giving the Mutt, even if they existed, which I doubt they do, at least those that would hold up to scrutiny anyway.
When then-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney signed into law the nation’s most far-reaching state health care reform proposal, it was widely expected to be a centerpiece of his presidential campaign. In fact Governor Romney bragged that he would “steal” the traditionally Democratic issue of health care. “Issues which have long been the province of the Democratic Party to claim as their own will increasingly move to the Republican side of the aisle,” he told Bloomberg News Service shortly after signing the bill. He told other reporters that the biggest difference between his health care plan and Hillary Clinton’s was “mine got passed and hers didn’t.” http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v30n1/cpr30n1-1.html
Shades of LBJ’s “N” word stuff in the wake of the CRA of 1964, no?
Call it a “cheap shot” if you like I suppose, but on the spectrum of undesirable invasions of a man’s nether regions, and in the context of creating a line of demarcation between the two candidates on the overarching issue of the rightwingnut apathy v the empathy BHO has been promoting, it’s more like a caress from gay man than a kick from a field goal kicker. Unwanted maybe, but abusive? I don’t think so.
Let’s not let perfection be the enemy of the good, no? The viewers of the ad can be brought to the right destination, even if the vehicle was a beater as you and many others think it was. Whatever flaws that reside in this effort I’d call “harmless error”, since what he was attempting to say about and portray the Mutt as, remains the undeniable truth. Focusing on the errors as opposed to that only serves to diminish the Mutt’s well deserved guilt. If you feel compelled to do so under your “fighting clean is more effective” standard against those who will never ever acknowledge any responsibility no matter how undeniable the causal connection might be, at least don’t use appeals consisting of what are equally contestable (and I’d argue moreso) claims like “he thought no one should die…” to undermine that which can’t be imo — that the Mutt doesn’t give a shit. He was too kind attributing it to a lack of understanding alone, which suggests that his effort wasn’t born on the level of the malice and forethought “groin kicks” generally are.
All the omissions in terms of the family insurance coverage timeline in no way overcomes the fact that had he not lost his job and insurance, a different outcome could be reasonably expected. SO let’s say nothing for the butts like Romney in the midst of an arguable “butfor” situation he can’t shed all of his guilt in.
That’s what Soptic was and is hanging his hat on, much as a great many can the cause of and responsibility for their bankrupt condition being the lack of medicare for all that would alleviate such problems. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=medical%20bankruptcies%20in%20for%20the%20insured&
;source=web&cd=1&ved=0CEoQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Farticles.cnn.com%2F2009-06-05%2Fhealth%2
Fbankruptcy.medical.bills_1_medical-bills-bankruptcies-health-insurance%3F_s%3DPM%3AHEALTH&ei=u-
EjUNyMH4fVyAGVxYGQBw&usg=AFQjCNFrcxOLvcfFOcoepfkbs68mamJBZg Unless and until we have that, it’s not just the Romney’s of this world that have a guilt-shedding problem.
And that is the issue being obscured by all the quibbling over this ad, and the central message I took from it. One side is opposed to its consideration as a solution for the dead and dying, while the other side is allowing themselves to be silenced by inundation with trifling BS from rightwingnuts designed to both shed their responsibility for their inhumanity against their fellow man, and to paint themselves as the responsible ones. Personally I think that’s why the Romney spokeperson stuck her foot in her mouth — because the message was unmistakable to them, and trying to have it both ways is preferable to facing a charge they have no defense of.
The ad properly fingered the guilty despite the flawed way (assuming not telling the whole story in this case is a flaw) in which it accomplished it. I therefore, don’t see it as a willfully dishonest one even remotely comparable to the rightwingnut efforts, or one that lends itself to use as a legitimate “both sides do it” example. According to him, or at least my understanding of it, his wife died because she stayed silent because he lost his insurance that would have spared the family finances, which her policy at the “Savers” store likely wouldn’t have had she contracted the ailment earlier. SO the trail still leads back to Romney and Bain, therefore I don’t get all the inaccuracies/distortions stuff. His argument is, that regardless of having insurance or not and all the other etcs in the interim between his job loss and her death, his wife stayed silent as a sacrificial lamb for preservation of their finances, which was in her mind, necessitated by his loss of his job and insurance due to Romney and Bain. I don’t see any deliberate distortions or inaccuracies there, I see him being convinced of the case he’s making as the only one familiar with the totality of their circumstances throughout this sad episode, and others merely identifying them as such, while willfully disregarding the fact it was what, a one minute ad or less? I’m shocked that it didn’t include everything that had no real bearing on what he saw as the proximate cause for the early death of his wife, and particularly when there is no perfect case of this sort to be made that the “coulda/woulda/shoulda” crowd wouldn’t have reduced to something like “he/she shoulda gotten a job that provided sufficient insurance coverage!”, kinda the way they think all the deprived should get a job as they whine about the unemployment numbers outta the other side of their disgustingly stupid and dishonest mouths.
“A short time after that, my wife became ill. I don’t know how long she was sick and I think maybe she didn’t say anything because she knew we couldn’t afford the insurance.”
I lost my mom for much the same reason last year, because she didn’t want to pay predictable medical bills that would have eroded what she wanted to leave her kids, and even over our objections of course.
I’d dare say that’s what really sticks in his craw — losing someone he loved dearly and for a long time who put others ahead of themselves, by no matter how directly or indirectly, the hand of some uncaring and greedy puck in love with quite possibly, only himself and that which totally defines him — his pursuit of his only other loves, money and power.
You’d almost think the concept of having ones life ruined forevermore by the single act of another or of your own choosing http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/08/08/645721/how-one-pill-can-ruin-a-mans-entire-career-in-flo
rida/ is under assault here. I haven’t seen anything entered into evidence in terms of willful and deliberate distortions/inaccuracies that would lead me to tell Mr. Soptic he is all wet on or his feelings about the matter. He likely is a victim of happenstance of rightwingnut creation, as are the conditions that make it so difficult economically to extricate oneself from, even after that victimization.
and he effectively made that case
Fighting clean is more effective than fighting dirty when all other things are equal.
If you walk into my yard and kill my dog, why am I going to tell the cops you killed my cat, too? That just needlessly undermines my credibility with the police and later on with the jurors.
If you have a solid case, make it. Don’t embellish it.
That’s my point.
I understood that part, and would agree, I just don’t think that particular characterization is in order here given the Romney response, which didn’t take exception to those details in their defense of it.
“Republicans want to dismiss Soptic’s story as being the equivalent of an accusation of murder. But that’s not what it is. It is, however, an accusation of callousness. The central point of the ad is that Mitt Romney put his own interests ahead of others, a pattern that we see continued to this very day with Romney’s abandonment of his signature policy achievement, Romneycare. The fact that Republicans refuse to defend Romney on the merits and instead try to shift the debate into hyperbole and irrelevancy speaks volumes about just how weak Romney’s position is on this very point, and Democrats can’t afford to walk away from this fight.”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/09/1118326/-Republicans-forget-to-defend-Romney-in-video-respo
nse-to-Bain-layoff-victim-ad
All the nitpicking has been done by those on both sides of the fence, albeit with different interests in mind, not who should be the offended party — the target of the ad. The rightwingnuts are looking to muddy the water as they always predictably do with faux moral outrage based on fabricated charges, and those on the left outta various concerns related to “not being like them” or providing them with any material with which to make that case.
As already argued, I don’t see any of the omissions that Soptic and surely the producers of the ad were aware of before its airing, as being distortions, or anything worthy of an admonition, because they have no undermining impact on the point of the ad. Hell, they aren’t even comparable to the raping the Mutt has repeatedly attempted with BHO over his “didn’t build that” comment. They don’t effect Soptic’s point/charge that his wife could be alive today butfor Bain/Romney being who and what they are.
The “distortion” charge suggests that they tried to hide something (like context in the “didn’t build that” case, and as lying in fact or by omission are intended to)) that would mitigate the damage his charge would do to Romney.
ANd based on the linked material above, it would seem that the newest rightwingnut defense is either indicative of their awareness that this is the case, or that they are so stupid as to think that attacking Cutter over the timeline issue is gonna accomplish in a roundabout way, what they couldn’t accomplish with a direct assault on the alleged distortions.
As is always the case with subject-changers, they do so because they know they have no real case to make, while hoping that the observer doesn’t recognize it for the tacit admission/concession it is.
Let’s hope none of them wise-up, and cite you, no? That needless to say is the point of my effort here, stamping out what I consider to be bi-partisan criticism of a perfectly legitimate, honest, and effective ad.
I guess we’ll just have to disagree on that description of it.
Lanny Davis says the Priorities USA ad is “disgusting”. Considering the source and his target, the ad has now graduated to “awesome”.