As McCain’s Campaign continues to go negative – using outright lies to paint Obama as an elitist, media celebrity – the question continues – how should Obama respond?
Obama has a difficult task to maintain his message of hope and change – while not allowing him self to be kicked around.
Yesterday on Hardball an Obama surrogate made a statement that caught my attention – and sparked an idea. He said, and a paraphrase – Obama is going to run a positive campaign. There is a lot of time – but do not be mistaken – as we get closer to the election if Obama needs to – he will cut off McCain’s head!
So here is what I think Obama should do. Continue with his positive message. Winning this way will allow Obama to actually have the moral authority to govern once elected. Diving into the weeds with McCain would still prove victorious – but make getting things done, once elected, much more difficult.
But - Obama can respond in a strong way and here is how. Give the go ahead to his ad team to produce all the negative McCain ads that they can make. Tell them to have fun and be creative. Hit McCain low and hard!
Then dispatch all of his surrogates to the cable shows to say that Obama wants to run a positive campaign about the issues of importance to the American people. But then add that McCain has so much that they can attack and Obama is prepared to do it. They could even say that many spots are already in the can. But, Obama will only run them if he is forced to do so.
His surrogates need to repeat this over and over and over. Until the media begins to ask the questions – what might these ads say? What could they attack McCain on? What are McCain’s weaknesses? Who is the real McCain? The cable shows would have a field day with this. They love this kind of stuff.
This strategy is a total win win for Obama. He doesn’t even have to run the ads but gets the media focused on McCain while at the same time making Obama look tough - but fair. Kind of – “Obama is a nice guy…………………… but you don’t want to piss him off”!
I think this could work and best of all its totally honest!
What do you think?
Obama has a difficult task to maintain his message of hope and change – while not allowing him self to be kicked around.
Yesterday on Hardball an Obama surrogate made a statement that caught my attention – and sparked an idea. He said, and a paraphrase – Obama is going to run a positive campaign. There is a lot of time – but do not be mistaken – as we get closer to the election if Obama needs to – he will cut off McCain’s head!
So here is what I think Obama should do. Continue with his positive message. Winning this way will allow Obama to actually have the moral authority to govern once elected. Diving into the weeds with McCain would still prove victorious – but make getting things done, once elected, much more difficult.
But - Obama can respond in a strong way and here is how. Give the go ahead to his ad team to produce all the negative McCain ads that they can make. Tell them to have fun and be creative. Hit McCain low and hard!
Then dispatch all of his surrogates to the cable shows to say that Obama wants to run a positive campaign about the issues of importance to the American people. But then add that McCain has so much that they can attack and Obama is prepared to do it. They could even say that many spots are already in the can. But, Obama will only run them if he is forced to do so.
His surrogates need to repeat this over and over and over. Until the media begins to ask the questions – what might these ads say? What could they attack McCain on? What are McCain’s weaknesses? Who is the real McCain? The cable shows would have a field day with this. They love this kind of stuff.
This strategy is a total win win for Obama. He doesn’t even have to run the ads but gets the media focused on McCain while at the same time making Obama look tough - but fair. Kind of – “Obama is a nice guy…………………… but you don’t want to piss him off”!
I think this could work and best of all its totally honest!
What do you think?
Then if you need to you even have Obama say that he is prepared to attack McCain for who he really is and has the spots ready to go. That would surely get the media all a twitter.
ReplyDeleteThen the last phase if needed would be to "leak" a spot or two to Youtube in order to prolong the conversation.
OK that last part would take it out of the totally honest category. But the option would be there.
Given the dearth of decent candidates in the GOP right now, I'm kind of partial to just cutting off McCain's head right now!
ReplyDeleteBut I do like your idea. It would certainly be a way to force the media to take a break from talking about "who Obama has a problem with this week" and start speculating on what's wrong with McCain. It might even get Bob Schieffer to soil his Depends!
Of course, we all know what's wrong with McCain! It's all out there already, if you look in the right places . . . like this blog!
One more thought:
ReplyDeleteYou can't wait until the last minute and then cut off McCain's head with one ad (or even a series of ads in rapid succession)
Ads are like a pocket knife and not a guillotine. You have to start hacking away pretty early in order to be effective. That's what the GOP understands and the Dems don't.
Negative impressions from ads take time to sink in with a significant portion of the electorate. The first time people see them, unfortunately whether the ads are factual or not, they are skeptical. It's only after they hear them many times do people start thinking they must be true because they keep hearing it.