GOP Ads Against Obama on TV This Weekend; Launch in Great Lakes States Focuses on Energy
By CRAIG GILBERT
Washington –The Republican National Committee will launch its first television ads against Democrat Barack Obama in Wisconsin and three other Great Lakes battleground states this weekend.
The spots, which focus on energy issues, represent the GOP’s initial foray into the general election ad wars. The Democratic National Committee has already aired TV ads speaking against Republican John McCain.
The ads are airing in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio, which were the largest of the 10 closest states in the 2004 presidential election.
The ad campaign signals the start of a Republican effort to chip away at the front-running Obama. But it also illustrates one way for the GOP to stretch its dollars against Obama, who is expected to sharply outspend McCain after rejecting public financing and spending caps.
The Republican Party is airing the spots as “independent expenditures.” That means there is no limit on what the party can spend on them. But by law, the ads can’t be coordinated with the candidate they benefit — McCain. Nor can the ads be legally planned or controlled by the GOP officials who interact with the McCain campaign.
To comply with those rules, the Republican committee has contracted with a Republican advertising consultant, Brad Todd, to handle the ad campaign independently. The party will be spending about $3 million on the new ads.
Such independent expenditures were used by both parties in the 2004 presidential campaign, though far more were run by the Democrats in that race.
Scripts of the ads were not initially released Wednesday. But they sparked a war of words between the two sides.
The Obama campaign Wednesday complained that attack ads aired by the GOP would fly in the face of McCain’s vows to run a “respectful” campaign. McCain aides and GOP officials have voiced the same complaint about the Democrats, saying ads by the Democrat committee and liberal groups attacking McCain were at odds with Obama’s promise to practice a different kind of politics.
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