The year’s best campaign ad juxtaposed Mitt Romney’s words with images of Americans suffering, and a new ad uses the same tactic to even more brutal effect. The ad starts off with Romney’s climate change quip from his convention speech: “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans, and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.” Then shots of Republicans laughing and clapping in response are intercut with scenes of the devastation from Hurricane Sandy. It ends with the words “Tell Mitt Romney: Climate Change isn’t a joke.”
Even in an election where we saw a super-PAC essentially accuse a candidate of murder, this is probably the year’s most gut-wrenching ad, yet Forecast the Facts, the group behind the spot, says it isn’t meant to be an Obama endorsement. “We’re not saying [Obama is better],” Brad Johnson, the group’s campaign manager tells U.S. News & World Report. “Just because we’re calling out the outrageousness of Mitt Romney’s deliberate cruelty doesn’t mean we find Obama’s silence to be anything other than a dereliction of duty.”
The ad, which was released over the weekend, has been viewed 600,000 times online, and the group raised $15,000 in donations to put it on the air in parts of Ohio and Virginia. Supposedly the point is that everyone needs to pay more attention to the issue of climate change, which was a non-issue in this campaign, though that nuance is lost amid the shots of Mitt Romney smirking as people fight their way through Sandy’s flood waters.
