Osama with a Bomb -- Republicans Go with the Dirty Daisy TV Commercial

Huffington Post
Blake Fleetwood
Osama with a Bomb -- Republicans Go with the Dirty Daisy TV Commercial:

This weekend the Republicans will go with their -- "Osama with a bomb" television ad.

Osama is Coming! Osama is Coming! Osama is Coming!

"These are the Stakes."

This ad harks back to the powerful anti-Goldwater ad of the 1964 presidential campaign: the message was that if you vote Republican, you will get blown up by an atom bomb. Republlican Barry Goldwater was successfully portrayed as a war monger and Lyndon B. Johnson won an overwhelming majority. The original Daisy ad received massive news coverage and has become an icon of negative political advertising. The transcript:

SMALL CHILD [with flower]: One, two, three, four, five, seven, six, six, eight, nine, nine ....

MAN: Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero.

[Sounds of exploding bomb.]

JOHNSON: These are the stakes: To make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the darkness. We must either love each other, or we must die.

ANNOUNCER: Vote for President Johnson on November 3rd. The stakes are too high for you to stay home.

The current message is, if you vote for the Democrats, you are going to get blown up by the boogeyman. The problem is Republicans have $100 million to drive home this message.

Democrats demounced this "fear and smear" attack ad and called it "A shameful ad invoking the image of despicable terrorists to scare the American people."

The Democrats must go to a more forceful rapid media response.

Political jujitsu is the art of taking the opponent's best issue and turning it against him,

So when the commercials scream:

Terror! Terror! Terror!

Democrats have to turn the word Terror into Bush Terror for the voters.

Headline the message that the Republicans have made this an unsafe world, that Bush, like Goldwater, is going to get us blown up.

The Democrats need to remind voters that Terror has gotten worse because of the Bush policies, that the threat of violence comes from Bush's provocative policies.

Make them think:

How come Bush didn't get Osama in the first place?

Every time the Republicans evoke fear by broadcasting a picture of Osama, the reaction should be:

How come Osama is still out there?

Is a bomb coming because of where Bush has taken us?