Fred Thompson: He's Real. And He's Spectacular

[continue reading...]

Ad of the Day

An innovative combination use of new media:

[continue reading...]

"I Just Saved a Bunch of Money by Switching to Ron Paul"

© David Weigel

Update (3/25/08): Like what you read? Read more by subscribing to No Straw Men via RSS or e-mail.

[continue reading...]

Why Can't Ron Paul Come Up With Something This Good?

David All alerts us to another anonymous, online political ad. Following the example set by Patrick Ruffini, since the ad wasn't on YouTube, I uploaded it there:



The ad's argument: As many others have pointed out, electing Hillary Clinton president would be strikingly similar to giving George W. Bush a third term. Ergo, vote for a real change candidate: Mike Bloomberg.

Headline explanation here.

[continue reading...]

Ron Paul's Lousy Ads

So this is where that war chest is going? What a waste.

[continue reading...]

Mitt Romney Blankets Merriam-Webster.com

Screen shot from a few minutes ago (my 17-inch monitor isn't big enough to capture all three ads, but you can see enough of the bottom one to get the idea):

[continue reading...]

The Daily Digest

Quin Hillyer elucidates Rudy's success vis-a-vis the religious right.

Kos traffic number inflated by 60%, reports Patrick Ruffini.

Google's growth is prompting the usual antitrust hysteria: "[B]y acquiring DoubleClick, Google will jump so far ahead of the pack with the technology and knowledge to be the only place marketers have to go to reach you and just about anybody else."

Clark Hoyt, the NYT's ombudsman, details how good journalists can and should call someone a "lair" without employing that epithet.

[continue reading...]

Crowdsourcing: The Next Big Thing

Here's the winning entry of Mitt Romney’s ad contest:



I agree wholeheartedly with Patrick Ruffini, who calls this

the best television ad for any candidate of any part so far this election. And it was created not by some big media consultant by Ryan Whitaker, a 23-year old student from Provo, Utah.

The raw footage, music, and speechifying was provided by the Romney media team. But it’s mixed together better than anything the campaign has released so far. It’s also head and shoulders above most of the other entries, showing that Ryan has a real eye for this kind of stuff—something that only an initiative like this could have brought out.

This is the spirit of crowdsourcing taken to a new level. Most organizations do user-generated content to get some free press or motivate supporters—but don’t expect the end product to be anything they can use in any strategic way. This is different, and a bar-raiser.

[continue reading...]

The Daily Digest

"The decision to adopt Hillary and drop Clinton has nothing whatsoever casual to it," observes Tod Lindberg.

David Frum notes three elementary mistakes in Bob Novak's memoirs: (1) Novak and Frum lunched, only once, at the Oval Room on November 21, 2001, not at the Hay Adams on September 19, 2001. (2) Frum began work as a White House speechwriter in January, not March, 2001. (3) Frum does not live in Georgetown, which Novak should know because he's been to Frum's house for dinner.

Check out the best of Reagan's TV ads from his 1984 campaign.

Does Daily Kos violate McCain-Feingold? According to a complaint filed with the FEC, "It surely spends at least $1,000 per year in hosting and based on what they charge (and get) for advertising, their support of candidates is certainly worth over $1,000 per year. Lastly, their self-identified purpose is to influence elections in the Democrats favor." David Freddoso draws the appropriate conclusion: "None of this is an argument for regulating Kos, but rather an argument for abolishing the silly campaign finance regime that that the Kos-krazies and their ilk have pushed on us for a generation now."

[continue reading...]

In Praise of Bill Richardson's Ad Team

Patrick Hynes doesn't like John Edwards's new ad, but Bill Richardson's new one, which continues the job interview theme, is catchy and substantive:



If you like this, you'll love Richardson's previous two (for what it's worth, Matt Bai, of the NYTM, thinks they "feel more like a cry for help than a campaign pitch"):

[continue reading...]

The Daily Dose

Clown Fish at National Aquarium in Baltimore

The politicization of Monday's tragedy at Virginia Tech has begun. According to Rob Bluey, who blogged the following after hearing it on the radio yesterday morning, Virginia Congressman Jim Moran "said Republican policies made it easy for the shooter to obtain a gun. When the show’s host tried to suggest that the gunman may have been hellbent on killing regardless of the law, Moran turned the conversation back to the GOP, complaining that the United States needs a national registry to track all firearms purchases and more stringent gun-control laws. Moran then blamed Bush and Republicans in Congress for opposing such measures at the behest of the NRA."

The bipartisan fiscal transparency movement, fueled by last year's Coburn-Obama bill, continues apace with S. Res 123, which requires the disclosure, in a searchable format on the Internet, of various information related to earmarks contained in committee-passed bills.

The Bank of America recently began a pilot program extending credit to illegal immigrants in California. At the time, my boss asked me to denounce the program, which I argued institutionalized illegality and made amnesty inevitable. Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward offers the counterview.

Another example of Google's business brilliance: buying—and outbiding Microsoft for—the online advertising firm, DoubleClick. The NYT explains: "Google, for all its outsize reputation, has made most of its money in the online basics: the text-based search engine and small text ads that are like the Yellow Pages of the online advertising. DoubleClick’s strength, by contrast, lies in flashy banner ads and, more recently, video ads that are more like high-end magazine or television ads." Adds one analyst, "Keeping Microsoft away from DoubleClick is worth billions to Google."

[continue reading...]