I haven't been focusing too much on the Presidential campaign. I'm far too confident that Barack Obama and Joe Biden will be inhabiting the White House come January 2009.
I'm also pretty confident that neither Obama nor Biden would waste their money installing a tanning bed in the chief executive's mansion. But follow the link, and you'll find that McPublican VP nominee Sarah Palin did just that in the Alaska Governor's mansion.
Now this has been blogged here on DailyKos earlier this week and a few angles continue. My angle? When you add the Palin tanning bed installment to the John McCain mulitple house fiasco, you get the perfect opportunity for the Obama/Biden campaign to come out with the response ad to end all response ads. The McPalin ad in question is the recent "Original Mavericks" spot now playing in media markets across the fruited plain.
My proposal, below the fold, is a word-for-word reply...McCain/Palin: The Original Elitists.
In case you can stomach seeing the ad again, or haven't caught it yet, here it is. Get your smelling salts ready:
I caught it sitting in the Albany area of New York, not exactly Republican territory. And even though I can't stand it, part of the reason I can't is that I find it remarkably effective in the case of uninformed viewers (read: the uninformed swing vote that could decide this election.) In case you can't stomach watching it, here's the script:
The original Mavericks.
He fights pork barrel spending
She stopped the bridge to nowhere.
He took on the drug industry
She took on big oil
He battled Republicans and changed Washington
She battled Republicans and reformed Alaska
They'll make history.
They'll change Washington.
McCain/Palin.
(Text on Screen: "The original Mavericks.")
Real change.
(I'm John McCain and I approve this message)
So, the idea for the response ad popped into my head immediately when I first heard the story on my "home" blog, The Albany Project. I instantly wondered what would happen if the shoe was on the other foot and it was Obama or Biden who had gotten a tanning machine installed in their own homes (much less the public property of an executive mansion). I figured that if that were the case, we wouldn't hear the end of it; it would have been a perfect example of how Barack Obama was an "elitist," to right-wingers Rush, Hannity, et al.
Well, I'm saying that this tanning bed thing, which Palin would have paid up to $35,000 for, along with a couple of other gaffes from both McPublican nominees, is the perfect cherry-on-top to throwing the Republicans' frame right back at them. That's the first point of framing as described in George Lakoff's definitive 2004 book on the subject, Don't Think of an Elephant!...you take the frame back and use it against them. In this case, the frame is that Obama is somehow an "elitist." We all know how foolish that one is.
So here's how we turn it around with a new ad called McCain/Palin - The Original Elitists. As my photobucket is full, feel free to picture, or post in the comments, the appropriate images (which do exist) in conjuction with the following script:
The original elitists.
He was eating birthday cake with President Bush while Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans.
She gave tax breaks to corporations and raised taxes on Alaskan's groceries.
He voted with George Bush and the Republicans 90% of the time.
She was for the Republican "Bridge To Nowhere" before she was against it.
He can't even remember how many mansions he owns.
She installed her own personal tanning bed in the Alaska Governor's mansion.
They're out of touch.
They'll bring more the same to Washington.
(Text on screen: The Original Elitists)
McCain/Palin?
That's not change.
(I'm Barack Obama and I approve this message because we need change we can believe in.)
I'd pay ten bucks just to see that on the big screen. But what I'd really like is to see it on the small screen in every media market where the McPalin "Original Mavericks" ad is playing. Because they aren't mavericks. They're double-speaking elitists, and the Palin tanning bed is the icing on the McCain/Bush birthday cake that proves it.
Let's get this idea out there, Kossacks. Rec this, Digg this, send it to the Obama camp, do whatever you will, but if you like it, get the meme out there. Take back the frame. Obama and Biden aren't the elitists, and McCain and Palin aren't the mavericks; it's the other way around. You know it, I know it, and Barack Obama and Joe Biden know it.
So make sure everyone else knows it too.
John McCain and Sarah Palin are the original elitists!
