Since folks on both sides of the political spectrum have taken it upon themselves to tear apart the ads being run by the statewide candidates in order to find something to make into an election issue, I figured I’d take a look at a recent ad being run by the Republican Governors Association on behalf of Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker. The ad, which is a takeoff of the “tastes great…less filling” Miller Lite ads from the 1980’s, attacks Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, but as the Barrett campaign pointed out earlier today, there’s just one problem with the ad: it wasn’t filmed in Wisconsin!
To prove the point that the ad wasn’t filmed in Wisconsin, here’s a screenshot from the ad, with one of the beer tappers highlighted:
As was noted by Ryan Alexander of the Barrett campaign, Blue Point is a small microbrewery in Long Island, NY that is only distributed to 500 locations in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York. What, couldn’t Scott Walker and the Republican Governors Association find a real bar here in Wisconsin in which to film their attack ad?
No doubt the Right Wing Outrage Brigade™ will be all atwitter now that it’s been revealed that this ad wasn’t filmed in Wisconsin and presumably didn’t use real Wisconsinites, after their attempts to may hay out of the fact that a recent ad run by Sen. Russ Feingold’s campaign included the name of a fictional individual. Ultimately, despite the tongue-in-cheek title of this post I don’t see this as being a big scandal, just like I don’t believe the attacks on Sen. Feingold’s ads by the Right Wing Outrage Brigade™ were worth wasting much time on. Political ads are marketing; nothing more and nothing less, and the fact that at times they play fast and loose with the facts shouldn’t surprise anyone.
However, here’s a tip for Scott Walker and the RGA….if you’re going to put out an ad purporting to be set in a bar in Wisconsin, at least try to pick some of Wisconsin’s great beers as the tappers.
wow thats earth shattering news, the repubs being hypocrites and their fake outraged exposed. i havent seen that since yesterday and probably wont again until tomorrow.
Thats the best you can do, it was not filmed in Wisconsin…..shows how the democrats are this election….they know they cannot run on their records, they know they are going to lose race after race in Nov so all they can do is make an issue out of where a commercial was filmed….OMG that is hysterical!
Nota, this is as big a deal as it was when Sen. Feingold used a fake name in his ad and the right wing tried to make it into a full-blown controversy.
Big difference. That ad was by Russ himself. Walker didn’t have anything to do with this ad.
nota you just dont get it do you? Zach couldnt of made it any clearer and you still just dont get it.
No YOU just don’t get it. If this is an ad by the Republican Governors Assoication, that means the Walker campaign didn’t/couldn’t have any input or oversight over the content of the ad. It’s called an independent expenditure. Maybe you missed the disclaimer at the bottom.
Mr. Walker could have created a couple of jobs in Wisconsin with this ad and once governor would already be a leg up on his promise of 250,000 jobs he’s gonna create. LOL!
But seriously, this should raise questions about Mr. Walker’s commitment to Wisconsin. We all know there are more than enough local agencies who can produce state of the art advertising campaigns.
Walker couldn’t have created any jobs with this ad… “Paid for by RGA Wisconsin 2010 PAC, Michael Adams, Treasurer. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s agent or committee.” So it really DOESN’T raise any issues about Walker or his commitment to Wisconsin.
See, I knew the Walker and GOP folks were out-of-touch dweebs. This should be in some up North tavern with O’So, South Shore, Point and Leinie’s taps. As usual, those guys don’t care about supporting quality Wisconsin businesses. 🙁 And to boot, we already know his primary opponent is a stein-holding champ!
On a more serious note, doesn’t this show that national GOP bigwigs are pulling the strings for Team Walker, and not real Wisconsinites? Not a good image when you’re relying on Wisconsinites to vote for you.
You guys are hilarious. Are you just pretending to not know how this all works? That the politics of campaigning as a result of McCain-Feingold is such that outside groups’ spending dwarfs what the actual candidates spend. Personally, as much as I hate the two main political parties, I think we were better off when they were doing most of the ads – at least you know who you were dealing with.
I wonder why not one of these jokers responded? I’m guessing there won’t be any more comments on this thread. I guess it’s fun to rant and rave when you don’t know what you are talking about, until someone points that out.
forgot ts already been explained. There are two stories here.
1. The National party is pulling walkers strings.
2. it shows how fake the outrage was out of Senator Feingold making up a name for his commercial.
Nice revisionism! Review the post and all of the comments and tell me Walker himself wasn’t being implicated. I wouldn’t really call the commentary on Feingold’s ad “outrage,” but again it was HIS ad, not a third party ad. And how is the national party pulling Walker’s strings simply by running their own ad? Ridiculous!
Liberals, if this ad was produced in a bar in Wisconsin I’m pretty confident you would simply find that bar and protest outside of it. So do you think many bars would be very motivated to have an anti-liberal ad held in their business?
And I’m pretty confident that if Sen. Feingold had used a real person’s name (instead of Elizabeth Ackland) in one of his recent ads, the right would have harassed that person, since they’ve demonstrated they’re not above that kind of thing (emphasis mine):
You’ll remember Jody Montgomery appeared in a TV ad for Gov. Jim Doyle when he was running for reelection.
You can tell by the whining that our point is accurate. Walker is a tool that doesn’t have the street cred to cut it outside of the Milwaukee suburbs. THAT’S the real point here.
Center on Media and Democracy discusses connection between RGA and Miller/Coors — a consistent contributor to RGA. In return Miller/Coors gets product placement in the ad and much more — http://www.prwatch.org/node/9510. Go to Hijacking Campaign 2010 for additional information on the group’s independent expenditures in Wisconsin for Fall 2010 elections — http://www.wisdc.org/ind10-501405.php.