As we have said before, no one does negative advertising like Republicans. Negative ads are the mother’s milk of all decent Republican political hacks and the campaigns they run. For decades no one has done it better than those on the Right. We Democrats have suffered many defeats, had victories “swiftboated” right out from under us, if you will, due to the genius creativity lurking in Right-wing hackistan.
But this time, many of those Right-wingers are on our side, and thankfully, we’re getting to enjoy the fruits of their labor while hopefully learning from the wizards. There are many at the top but the Lincoln Project stands a head above. Part of the appeal is that the Lincoln Project includes several of our favorite writers and TV personalities, Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver, and George Conway. Conway is the man married to Kellyanne, who was the inspiration for one of the best ads:
According to Politico [1]:
“Galen had co-founded the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump PAC run by Republicans, with the goal of convincing Americans to vote against him in November. In May, the group thought Trump’s response to the pandemic had created the perfect opportunity to both make their case,” the report stated. “Off of a brainwave that cofounder George Conway had during a conversation with his wife, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, Galen and his small team guessed Trump would be particularly enraged by an in-the-moment ad that portrayed the president as making Americans ‘weaker, sicker and poorer’ than ever before.”
It helps that the Lincoln Project’s purpose isn’t necessarily to sway voters. No, they intend to occupy that dark corner of Trump’s mind, filling him with doubt, while Biden can run a normal campaign, even be positive:
“It’s not just pissing off Donald Trump. Anybody could do that,” Galen recalled in an interview with Politico’s Tina Nguyen and Elena Schneider. “It’s, to what effect? Like, why are you doing it? And the point is to take him off his game and take his campaign off their game, strategically and tactically, so that the Biden campaign and Joe Biden can have the freedom of movement and the green air to do the things that they need to do.”
It has certainly worked. Trump has lashed back about a lot of the ads. But the one that really got Trump “off his game” was the one that called Trump “unwell,” in questioning his health. The other particularly effective ad was the haunting “Mourning in America” ad, one from which Trump still hasn’t fully recovered.
It only makes it better knowing that Kellyanne Conway served as the inspiration for some of the media that keeps Trump up at night!
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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on twitter @MiciakZoom