Romney Opens General Election Ad Buys With “Day One” Ad

The Romney campaign is out with it’s first ad of the General Election season, and it essentially stands as a statement of what a President Romney would do on his first day in office:

It’s no mistake that the Keystone Pipeline gets prominent mention here, because we’ve seen several polls showing that approval of the project would be very popular with voters throughout the country (of course, the Obama Administration could undercut this part of Obama’s message by quickly approving the revised route for the pipeline taht was recently submitted). For the most part, it strikes me as a fairly good introductory spot for the General Election. Right now, they’re apparently running it on a limited basis in swing states like Ohio, Florida, and Virginia, but it’s worth noting that they’ve also produced a Spanish language version of the ad that could be used not only in those three states but also in states like Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona.  It’s also a fairly well-produced ad. In fact, the one thing that I noticed the first time I saw the ad online this morning was an apparent resemblance between the voice of the narrator of the ad and Barack Obama’s voice. I’m not sure if that was a deliberate choice, and I may be the only person who sees the resemblance, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless.

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Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. WR says:

    Wow. Day One: Tax cuts for rich people.

    Man, I’ve got to vote for this guy!

  2. I’m not commenting on the policy, merely the mechanics of the campaign

  3. G.A. says:

    Nice add.

  4. I agree; the Obama voice is rather creepy.

  5. sam says:

    “It’s no mistake that the Keystone Pipeline gets prominent mention here, because we’ve seen several polls showing that approval of the project would be very popular with voters throughout the country”

    BTW, are you aware that much of the land for the pipeline will be gotten via post-Kelo emminent domain takings?

    Keystone cannot be built without seizing right-of-way by eminent domain. Otherwise every property owner along the course of the pipe could hold out for top dollar, and the thing would be utterly uneconomic. That’s not to deny that the pipeline operator may well be abusing the eminent-domain process, or the threat of it, to offer less-than-fair compensation to the landowners. [H/T Mark Kleiman]

    Anybody ask Der Mittster about that?

  6. sam says:

    eminent domain, that is.

  7. sam says:

    Here’s the Times story Mark reffed:

    An Old Texas Tale Retold: the Farmer vs. the Oil Company

    Kicker:

    “When you allow a pipeline to cross your land, you give up certain rights to it,” Ms. Crawford said. “You can’t use your land the way you want anymore. We didn’t want to do that.”

    But TransCanada did not go away. Their people kept coming back, offering more and more money.

    Then on Aug. 26, 2011, Ms. Crawford received a letter from Keystone, TransCanada’s American subsidiary. The letter made a “final offer” of $21,626. Then, it said, “if Keystone is unable to successfully negotiate the voluntary acquisition of the necessary easements, it will have to resort to the exercise of its statutory right of eminent domain.”

    “In other words,” Ms. Crawford said, “sign or we’ll take it.”

  8. Tsar Nicholas says:

    @sam: This is not a “post-Kelo” condemnation scenario. Kelo involved one local government taking private property to put in that local government’s specific redevelopment plan. Keystone is an international, interstate oil pipeline. Apples & oranges. 1+1 does not = 6.

    In any event, this IMO is a very good ad, especially for their initial foray. Well done. Team Obama’s ad people also are top notch, so the ad wars for the Nov. election should be quite interesting.

  9. al-Ameda says:

    Wow, just a as cheesy and low rent as the candidate himself – what a surprise.

  10. Just 'nutha ig'rant cracker says:

    @John Peabody: Sorry, I don’t hear the resemblance at all. The voice is several step lower in pitch, doesn’t have the front of the mouth/nasal inflection and the accent is from the Western US, not Illinois.

  11. sam says:

    @Tsar Nicholas:

    This is not a “post-Kelo” condemnation scenario. Kelo involved one local government taking private property to put in that local government’s specific redevelopment plan. Keystone is an international, interstate oil pipeline. Apples & oranges. 1+1 does not = 6.

    Ah bullshit, Nick. It’s a private company initiating a government-sanctioned taking against a private landowner for the benefit of the private company – justified by reference to economic development. And my reference to Kelo was, I had hoped, designed to point to the right-wing freakout over that decision. The real point was, well let me quote Mark here:

    It’s perfectly consistent to think that eminent-domain powers can be used to complete projects better left unstarted, and also to think that bad projects ought to be blocked on their merits. It’s not quite so consistent to back property rights except when the big energy companies want to confiscate them.

    In other words, where’s the freakout here? I’m (and Mark) are wondering where the stout champions of private ownership are on the Keystone thing. I would like to hear Mitt’s take.

  12. Hey Norm says:

    Why is it that Republicans have to lie in order to make a case for themselves?
    Anyone?

  13. G.A. says:

    Why is it that Republicans have to lie in order to make a case for themselves?
    Anyone?

    We is trying to lay it out in a way libs can understand and in their own language?

  14. Jeremy R says:

    It’s too bad Romney is perusing a partisan media strategy of only giving interviews to the likes of HotAir and Townhall, as some journalist really needs to pin him down on the last part of that ad:

    President Romney issues order to begin replacing Obamacare with common sense health care reform

    Besides the fact that his team and the congressional GOP is all over the place and refuse to be pinned down on the specifics of what they’d do with the 10s of millions of uninsured, preexisting conditions, rescission, the huge amount of cost saving experiments the ACA funded, etc, it would be interesting to hear what Romney thinks he can actually do through that executive order on “Day one.”

  15. jukeboxgrad says:

    sam:

    “It’s not quite so consistent to back property rights except when the big energy companies want to confiscate them.”

    Property rights are important. Therefore if you own big property you have more rights than a person who owns little property. One dollar, one vote. See? Not complicated. Republicans love freedom and democracy.

  16. grumpy realist says:

    @Jeremy R: Especially if Romney actually thinks he could do something like this on Day One.

    Makes me wonder what else he fails to understand about Separation of Powers and all that. He does know that being the POTUS means you’re not an absolute monarch, correct?

    (On second thought….)