The Republican Governor’s Association is going on the offensive in Virginia with this ad against Creigh Deeds – and using the video which could be the key moment of the campaign:
The commercial is marginally effective, but doesn’t do justice to the original video in which Deeds flounders in technicalities for three minutes. Interestingly enough, though, is that Deeds has not answered the charges that he will raise taxes or that his transportation plan is still under construction. Bob McDonnell acknowledged questions about his views on women in the workplace and answered them with commercials featuring the women closest to him.
Speaking of which, when not trying to drop Mark Warner’s name, Deeds continued his attempts to re-frame McDonnell as a reactionary with this commercial (which is likely not seeing as much airtime in more rural pars of Virginia but has been hitting the DC market):
This is more effective than his past attempts to re-invent McDonnell because it actually uses McDonnell’s spoken (and recent) words rather than a 20-year old thesis. As Matt Lewis observed a couple weeks ago, the lack of video to underscore the writing meant the thesis wouldn’t become the “macaca moment” of the 2006 campaign.
Unfortunately for Deeds, all this ad really does is remind people that McDonnell is pro-life. Trying to turn the race into a referendum on abortion is probably not a winning strategy – and not the strategy he had probably intended, either.
Jim Eltringham 