The new Republican National Committee ad "The Stakes" (set to air this weekend) returns to the familiar theme of "vote for us or you will perish in a hellish firestorm." It's subtle stuff.

The securers of the homeland have placed their spot in the tradition of LBJ's Daisy ad from the 1964 presidential campaign, in which a little girl (of questionable math skills) picks petals off a flower as a voice counts down to a nuclear explosion. "The Stakes" punctuates a string of scary Al Qaeda pictures with a big mushroom cloud, implying anything is permissible as long as the other side kinda did it once.

Still, the equivalency is a little off. LBJ was indeed fearmongering, though he also ended with the amazingly open-souled message that "we must either love each other or we must die." It'd be hard to make an argument that "the Stakes" is anything more than a nihilist Hail Mary — the Osama Now wing of the Democratic party being hard to find or at least very, very sneaky.

Also, why so much reading? If someone is dumb enough to fall for this, is he really the subtitle type? Somewhere between the Film Forum and a Hooters in Dubuque, there is an audience for this ad. If they can also pull a lever, maybe the homeland will survive.

Watch the ad. [RNC]