Another election year in the U.S. and another political commercial. In this case it's Republicans attacking Republicans as they jockey for second place behind Donald Trump who, despite indictments and states tossing his name from the ballot is still a front-runner.
Taken on pure terms without getting into the weeds of culture wars and social security, this ad is poorly edited and ends on a self-contradictory note. For those who don't know, Nikki Haley seems to be the American Corporate Media's choice for front-runner. And Ron DeSantis is hated by everyone except people in Florida who elected him and like what he is doing in the state.
Ron has no chance of being the winner so he is trying to take Nikki down, and the way he is going about this is by rightly pointing out her lies, by using her own words against her.
Regarding raising the age of retirement, she haughtily declares "I never said that!" Cut to Nikki Haley saying exactly that.
"I never once said Hilary Clinton was an inspiration." Cut to Haley in an interview "I ofter say the reason I got into politics was because of Hillary Clinton." We don't know the rest of that sentence which gets cut off; it might be dismissive of her or fawning. But if you squint you can see the connection.
"I never said that government should require anyone's names," in the debate about whether people should remain anonymous online. Then it cuts to an interview were Haley calls it a huge issue that I'll do with as soon as I get there is social media...they need to verify Every Single Person on their outlet. And I will want it by name," Note the camera push in on "Every single person." Nice bit of propaganda, that.
But then the ad spends a lot of time on the transgender bathroom issue and gets convoluted. If they are trying to make the point that Nikki won't protect kids, her response in multiple clips is that the government should stay out of it.
I thought smaller government was what Republicans wanted?
The other thing that bothers me about this ad is there is no call to action. No "Vote as if your life depended on it," or "In your heart, you know he's right," or "I'm with her." There's no message. It's just a slew of contradictory statements, as if we don't know politicians lie to get elected.
What I would dearly love to see is real time fact checking during the debates. Even though the debates would be long it would be amazing to see someone insist they never said X and then see a super cut of all the times they saw it. Put some pressure on these fuckers.