Dueling ads: Helping Democrats

posted at 11:45 am on January 18, 2012 by Ed Morrissey

We’re coming down to the wire in South Carolina, which means that it’s time for the negative ads to hit the media markets in the Palmetto State. In this corner, we have a new ad from Mitt Romney’s campaign called “Undisciplined,” which attacks Newt Gingrich in a direct manner as an erratic Republican leader in the mid-1990s as Speaker of the House. Rep. Susan Molinari offers her own assessment from personal experience in this 30-second spot, arguing that Gingrich’s performance ended up helping Democrats:

And in the opposite corner, the super-PAC Winning Our Future backing Gingrich has a new 60-second spot that imagines a debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Did I say debate? I meant a love fest, which WOF claims will help Democrats:

The second ad will get laughs, but it’s making a pretty good prediction about the strategy Obama would likely employ in a debate against Romney. However, the same strategy works with Gingrich as well, who backed individual mandates for health-care reform for years, as late as 2008, and was defending RomneyCare’s “tremendous potential” as late as 2006.  Gingrich was hardly alone in this on the Right; at one point, the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation backed an individual mandate, although Heritage changed its mind years before ObamaCare, a fact that Obama has cited on more than one occasion while defending ObamaCare.  This may well explain why the other candidates on stage have hardly mentioned RomneyCare in debates for the last few events.

I give the edge in Round One to Romney’s ad, but neither side has landed a tough blow.  The haymakers probably won’t appear until tomorrow or Friday.

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Please tell us why you believe her Lie in that video about the video was in fact true, and we’ll go from there.

Del Dolemonte on May 7, 2013 at 5:12 PM

“We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful internet video that we had nothing do to with.”

Is that the ‘lie’ you refer to?

verbaloon on May 7, 2013 at 5:22 PM

Yes. Now please tell us why you believe she was telling the truth when she said those words. And why you are desperately bending over backwards to give her and O’bama the benefit of the doubt in this matter, when we know you would have never done had this tragedy happened on Bush and Rice’s Watch.

But before doing so, please remember that many folks here on the Right Side of the blogosphere confirmed last fall that when she said those words, youtube’s own records (the view count for the video) showed that hardly anyone had viewed that “evil video” at the time she Lied about it on TV. You are familiar with the mechanics of youtube view counts, aren’t you?

F-

Del Dolemonte on May 7, 2013 at 5:33 PM

verbaluce on May 7, 2013 at 5:29 PM

You’re a sad figure for typing that comment. If you don’t know it, you can’t be helped.

I told you immediately after it happened what was behind it. Amb. Stevens should have been in the bunker of the main embassy, in Tripoli, that day. It’s the MO of all major embassies, on such days. All else went sour from there and is a huuuuuge cover up, to keep Obama in power.

It’s very sad that you, of all the trolls, are as insane as all the others on this topic.

Schadenfreude on May 7, 2013 at 5:33 PM

Paul Mirengoff at Power Line:

When it first became clear that the CIA’s Benghazi talking points had been altered, many of us viewed the White House as the prime suspect. After all, it served President Obama’s political purposes to claim, at the height of a political campaign in which he was taking credit for the fall of al Qaeda, that the death of a U.S. ambassador was down to spontaneous outrage over a video, rather than pre-planned terrorism.

It turns out, however, that the State Department was the prime culprit. It was State that pushed back hard against the original talking points. The White House, probably for the political reason cited above, took its side.

Why did State want the talking points changed? Because it had ignored warnings about rising terrorist activity in Libya and had reduced security rather than beefing it up, as our embassy requested.

-snip-

Was Hillary Clinton directly involved in this cover-up? It’s difficult to see how she could not have been.

As I understand it, when State pushed back against the CIA’s talking points, a White House meeting was scheduled to thrash out the issue. One can imagine Clinton failing to keep apprised of something as mundane as a mounting threat to be safety of her personnel in Libya. But surely she was in the loop when it came to a bureaucratic struggle about how our U.N. ambassador was going to spin the Benghazi debacle. And surely, her representatives would not attend the meeting in which that bureaucratic struggle was to be resolved without being able to state the desires of the Secretary of State.

Hillary Clinton, then, is culpable at the front end of the Benghazi disaster — when she and/or her agents ignored requests for enhanced security — and at the back end — when she and her agents engineered an attempted cover-up.

Del Dolemonte on May 7, 2013 at 5:36 PM

Media, most of you, suffocate from consuming Obama’s shit. It ain’t Beluga caviar and you all deserve to be depleted of oxygen over such dereliction of duty.

Schadenfreude on May 7, 2013 at 5:37 PM

Send in the clowns…

verbaluce on May 7, 2013 at 5:29 PM

Why, you are already here. Your histrionics continues to amuse. You aren’t interested in a genuine investigation. You’re a pathetic little hack with your head so far up Obama’s azz it’s comical. Oh, and who is going to lead a genuine investigations? The democrats? The State Dept? The media? ROFLMAO!!!!! Your pathetic attempts to chastise commenters here who want the truth are a laugh riot.

Now phuck off and go back to blowing your Obama doll.

HumpBot Salvation on May 7, 2013 at 5:37 PM

Petraeus should burn in Hell on Earth, and then some.

Schadenfreude on May 7, 2013 at 5:37 PM

verbie you lost your 2% of credibility on this thread. You are now the same as all the others, sadly.

Schadenfreude on May 7, 2013 at 5:38 PM

Obama, McCain and Rubio were fully pushing the Libya invasion.

Obama owns Benghazi.

Hillary owns Benghazi.

Benghazi proved, without a shred of doubt, that Hillary is as dumb at 3:00a.m., when the phone rings, as is Obama.

Obama flew to Vegas to campaing, the next day, after he’d gone to sleep after being told the embassy was on fire.

Some caring characters they are.

Most derelict are the parents of Amb. Stevens. Were they not so leftist they’d have pushed for answers before the election. How derelict are they?

Schadenfreude on May 7, 2013 at 5:41 PM

verbie, you’re needed on the Sheila Jackson Lee thread.

Schadenfreude on May 7, 2013 at 5:44 PM

Based on actual documents and official releases (not the alleged secret hidden ones) the admin’s statements reflected that which they were getting from the CIA. The information evolved as time went on.
There is nothing that shows at any time the WH officially offering up anything that stood in contradiction to what they were being provided by intelligence services.
There is nothing that shows them knowingly providing false info.

verbaluce on May 7, 2013 at 5:17 PM

Yeah sorry no. Based on the various revisions to the “talking points” out there, it’s pretty clear they were edited in a way that made it possible to push the patently false youtube video narrative, i.e. removed all references to AQ, Ansar al-Sharia, weapons and militants in Libya. To say their later statements reflect what they got from the CIA … lol.

rightmind on May 7, 2013 at 5:45 PM

Schadenfreude on May 7, 2013 at 5:33 PM

And as I offered back then, a valid point to question why Stevens wasn’t more secure…or provided with more security.

(And thanks…but I’ll leave you to whatever i going on re: Shelia Jackson.)

verbaluce on May 7, 2013 at 6:01 PM

There is nothing that shows them knowingly providing false info.

verbaluce on May 7, 2013 at 5:17 PM

You’re lying, verbaluce.

blink on May 7, 2013 at 5:57 PM

Yea…everyone’s lying.
/sarc

verbaluce on May 7, 2013 at 6:02 PM

Benghazi Embassy:

The official told story, as of now seems to be falling apart at a fast and ferocious paced. Just thinking about some things that may not mean anything but here goes!

Looking back to the internet posting of 11-13 September 2012, there are literally 10,000′s posting stating in one manner or another that Sam Bacile and his film caused the riots that caused the deaths. Then almost nothing until he is arrested and gets 1 year in federal prison for parole violation. Then nothing after that he seems to completely disappear of the grid. There seems to be some indication that he may be out and under Federal protection but nothing provable.

The internet acts fast BUT 10,000′s postings all pointing to a film, with in 24 hrs, look a lot more like a mass mailing then news and opinion reporting. There is very limited evidence of any sustainability of outrage.

Next thing I fine most interesting is: If all this was outrage caused by the film, then why is the film still available on Youtube and no one in the world cares anymore?

Just all seems a bit strained of ones imagination.

jpcpt03 on May 7, 2013 at 6:23 PM

You are trying way too hard with that line.

verbaluce on May 7, 2013 at 3:59 PM

Nope. Go back and read the thread.

‘Well of course it bothers you. You are predisposed to be bothered by virtually any irrelevant detail presented as some piece of some mysterious puzzle.’

Um, it would bother me if ANY Commander-in-Chief did it. I was and still am bothered about what was said in the lead up to the Iraq War.

And of course how perfect that you’re troubled by a conversation he did NOT have. What does it mean? Well maybe not much.

Um, it means that he was NOT acting as a Commander-in-Chief should when the first Ambassador in 33 years has gone missing – he wasn’t told until the following morning that Stevens had died even though it was known before then.

Why would any President not be concerned enough to about a missing Ambassador and an attack on the Benghazi consulate? Why would he NOT being in touch with the Secretary of Defence?

Of course something went wrong in Benghazi…Americans died there.

And, we deserve the TRUTH about it.

And if some folks around Obama had concerns about the political angles…well sure as heck so did Mitt Romney. And so did the GOP, DNC, Karl Rove, James Carville, etc.

A sitting American President lied to the American public, his fellow citizens, for political reasons about a terrorist attack and, therefore, was actually covering up the real reason behind the attack: Islamists militants and Al Qaeda in a country that he decided to destabilise by acting militarily without the consent of Congress and during an election when his narrative that ‘GM is alive, OBL is dead, and AQ is on the run.’

But to extrapolate from that all this murderous and nefarious malice and conspiracy and heartless motivations…it’s just drama-queening.

See Bob Scheiffer and Salon mag, to name two, about that.

Resist We Much on May 7, 2013 at 6:37 PM

What’s really a shame is that any genuine investigation into what went wrong and resulted in the tragic deaths over there is thwarted to make room for one of Issa’s circuses.
Send in the clowns…

verbaluce on May 7, 2013 at 5:29 PM

What genuine investigation?

The Mullins-Pickering investigation that failed to interview Hillary Clinton?

The one that would not allow – think how Orwellian that is – Congress access to the survivors and went so far as to change the names of them in their own medical records?

The one that didn’t interview the people on the ground?

The one where the Obama administration said ‘No comment pending the report of the ARB’ and then started squawking that ‘Benghazi happened a long time ago. We need to move on…’?

Resist We Much on May 7, 2013 at 6:54 PM

What’s really a shame is that any genuine investigation into what went wrong and resulted in the tragic deaths over there is thwarted to make room for one of Issa’s circuses.
verbaluce on May 7, 2013 at 5:29 PM

Nice attempt at lowering expectations.
J/K Verbie, that was actually a pathetic attempt.

JusDreamin on May 7, 2013 at 7:15 PM

Instapundit.com ‏@instapundit 4h

Note Hillary still blaming video in funeral speech, long after truth was known. At 16:25-17:45 in video. #Benghazi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY81JQZ3_bI …

ted c on May 7, 2013 at 7:17 PM

Heck, if the CIA is that dishonest and willing to bend over for politicians in office, why didn’t Hillary ask the CIA to blame Bush????

fred5678 on May 7, 2013 at 5:15 PM

I have known a number of federal agents. Up to a point, most feds just do as they are told and they have good days and bad and weak sisters (excuse the sexism) in different jobs.

As indicated above, the entire video and spontaneous protest meme was absurd from the start. So the obvious question is who was selling it or ordering people to include it in the narrative?

It certainly lived long enough. It was publicly cited by the two Dem POTUS candidates in statements. Money was spent on TV ads in Pakistan.

Repeat, slowly…“money was spent on TV ads in Pakistan”.

LOL

And these people control nuclear weapons and a billion rounds of ammo in DHS!

IlikedAUH2O on May 7, 2013 at 7:20 PM

So I see not Bret hair, or bill o idiot is talking about the whistleblowers.mwell there you have it. No big deal mova along

Conservative4ev on May 7, 2013 at 8:04 PM

This week, we will see whether the Leader of the Free World will throw his Former Secretary of State under his now world-famous bus, as he apparently did those 4 brave Americans on that horrible night of September 11, 2012.

It will not surprise anyone if he does.

Harry S. Truman had a plaque on his desk which read,

The Buck Stops Here.

President Barack Hussein Obama has one on his desk, which reads,

It’s Not My Fault.

kingsjester on May 7, 2013 at 11:36 AM

Pretty sure the sign on Obama’s desk reads, “The Buck Stops …. uhhhh, in the Bush Administration.”

There Goes the Neighborhood on May 8, 2013 at 12:23 AM

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