Campaign Diaries

News broke last Thursday that the RNC was preparing to air the first contrast ad of the general election in four battleground states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. The buy was announced as a significant one (around $3 million), something Democrats will have to get used to given the RNC’s gigantic budget. Today, while trying to recover from the magnificent Nadal-Federer Wimbledon final, we got our first glimpse of the ad. As expected, it focuses on energy issues:

The ad advances two related themes that will be at the core of the McCain campaign in the coming months:

1. John McCain is presented as moderate and not beholden to his party’s conservative wing (ie. the Bush Administration). It is remarkable to hear an ad paid for by the RNC praise McCain for “pushing” his party to recognize the reality of global warming. Obama is here attacked for being predictably lefty, reflexively liberal and too tied to the “environmental lobby.” The ad accuses him of voting party-line 97% of the time.
2. McCain is also praised as a pragmatist who offers concrete solutions that are in tune with science, whereas Obama is described as an ideologue too busy vetoing sensible solutions for the sake of ideological/environmental commitments (”no to nuclear power” and to the gun tax) to propose his own plans.

This makes it evident why the GOP is eager to run on the energy issue in the coming months: Not only is it an issue that Republicans believe is a winner for them (even though hitting Obama on the gas tax did Clinton no good in late April), but it is one on which McCain can distance himself from Bush and present himself as a moderate without angering the conservative base. Bush has so strayed to the right on environmental issues that for McCain to just recognize the existence of global warming allows him to portray himself as a moderate.

Meanwhile, a second ad meant to influence the presidential election was released today by an independent pro-Iraq war group, Vets for Freedom. It features veterans of Iraq/Afghanistan or family members insist that the surge is working and that it is important to finish the job, “whoever the next president:”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIrtP6Ba9J0]

While the ad never mentions Obama, McCain or either of the two parties, the aim is clearly to move public opinion towards the Republican position. The surge is associated with McCain, after all, and if more voters come to embraced the position defended by the ad (staying in Iraq and stop talking of withdrawal), McCain’s road would be much easier.

Of course, the danger for the GOP is that telling voters that withdrawal isn’t everything might remind them that, for McCain, it doesn’t seem to be anything at all. That is the attack Democrats have long prepared against the Republican nominee and their efforts have been boosted by the Republican candidate’s careless soundbites. However many veterans Republicans put on the screen and however much public opinion comes to scale back its approval of withdrawal, McCain will have to defend himself against the perception of an extreme hawkishness when it comes to Iraq.

The ad will run in Ohio, New Mexico and Virginia for $1 million, an interesting slate of states that confirms that Ohio is shaping up to be ground zero of the 2008 battle once again (despite Obama’s attempts to move the election’s epicenter elsewhere) and that some Republicans are coming around to recognize Virginia’s importance in this year’s elections.