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One thing that the Republican party has traditionally done much better than the Democratic party is to distill their policies into simplistic, easy to understand (and repeat) soundbites. Sometimes the soundbites aren’t even representative of actual policies, but they’re definitely short and folksy. The fact of the matter is, regardless of whether or not it’s intellectually insulting, for many voters it’s easier to at least feel like you know where a candidate stands when you’ve got a list of four half-baked slogans than trying to parse out a 1,700 page document outlining the complexities of the American health care system. That being said, obviously the Republican party is mostly run by college-educated brain trusts, most of whom went to the same schools as the Democrats. It’s just a cynical strategy. This series of tongue-in-cheek political ads (via HuffingtonPost) dares to examine what those well-heeled cynical jerks are doing as they plot to fool us with their dum dum ideas.
Cynical! Jerks! They know just what they are up to!
People do care about the environment! Hey, these guys are liars!
Even Republicans think Karl Rove is a worm-faced jerk when the door is closed and they are behind it!
Agreed, Sarah Palin is a nightmare!
You know, these ads are kind of clever and insightful, but they have a really complicated premise to accept, process, and digest in 30 seconds. And if a lot of the Republican success is based on keeping things simple, straight-forward, and depressingly unintelligent, then maybe a series of ads that use HIGH SATIRE to reveal COMPLICATED AND UPSETTING TRUTHS, is kind of the same problem that these ads are trying to MAKE FUN OF. JUST SAYING.
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if this premise is actually too compicated for the American people to grasp, that makes me really sad. ‘maverick, maverick, maverick’
You are right. This ad campaign is the same kind of thing that this ad campaign is mocking. The first two ads are particularly irritating, as they imply that there are no answers to the questions they are supposedly avoiding through sound bite politics. There are reasonable responses, and they are given often by talking heads and even by the candidates when they have a chance speak at length.
The people who wrote these ads might disagree with those positions, but it is dishonest to pretend that they do not exist.