“Wherever it comes from, that is an unprecedentedly stupid so-called strategy”
Luntz: Ads about disappointed Obama voters work best with swing voters.
Americans for Prosperity may be cutting through the clutter most effectively with its relatively low-key attacks on President Obama.
Almost everyone in the group said they voted for Obama in 2008, but they were about evenly split between Obama and Mitt Romney in the 2012 race, with several still undecided.
This approach may also have the benefit of closing the Romney-Obama likeability gap. A Gallup poll on attack ads this week found that 44 percent of Americans think Obama’s attacking Romney unfairly while only 40 percent believe Romney’s attacking Obama unfairly. Among independents, the number who think Obama’s attacking unfairly rises to 46 percent while Romney’s number falls to 38 percent. Up against a guy with Obama’s charisma cachet and media protection, this is an encouraging sign.
People are not going to decide their vote based on someone attacking their opponent “too much.” If that were true, Obama would have lost in a landslide because of how much Sarah Palin was attacked. If you make credible attacks, they will work, and the more relentless you are with the attacks, the more they’ll work. No one gets points for running ads that are “nice” towards their opponent.
If Romney’s ads are testing better than Obama’s, it’s probably because the criticisms in them are more credible. They’d be better off leaving out the stuff about Obama being “a nice guy who gave it a good try.” If the point is to convince Obama voters they made a mistake last time, may as well explain to them just how big a mistake it was and motivate them even more to switch their vote.