Republicans debuted a new ad Thursday in which a frustrated former Obama supporter expresses her disappointment with the president. The only problem: The woman in the video is actually an RNC staffer.
The new ad features Republican National Committee Director of Hispanic Outreach Bettina Inclan, who in the ad purports to be an average woman voter who supported Obama in 2008. She describes her disillusionment with the president in the ad as a romantic relationship gone awry.
“You’re just not he person I thought you were,” Inclan says in the ad, addressing a cardboard cutout of Obama. Inclan lists out-of-control spending and Obama’s penchant for hanging out with Hollywood celebrities as reasons for the break-up. “It’s not me, it’s you. I think we should just be friends.”
The ad asks people to share why they’re “breaking up” with Obama.
The RNC says its ad, which first appeared on television Thursday is not dishonest.
“It’s a lighthearted ad to show how millions of Americans feel about President Obama — he’s not the person we thought he was and it’s time to break up with him,” an RNC official told TPM. “But let’s be clear, it is an ad.”
Inclan began her current RNC post in January 2012, and has worked in Republican politics since well before Obama’s 2008 election. She did Hispanic outreach for Rick Scott’s 2010 Florida gubernatorial race worked on Capitol Hill for Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) and as national executive director of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly.
“I was never pressured to be a Republican, but I am very much a fiscal conservative,” Inclan told Business Insider in May. “It might be because we were always on a very tight budget growing up. Or maybe my views of the world fall in line with the Republican Party.”
Reaching out to voters who feel let down by Obama is a big part of Republicans’ strategy for wooing undecided and independent voters who might like Obama personally but feel he hasn’t been an effective president. Romney spoke about disappointment in his acceptance speech in Tampa last week. The conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity is up with several ads featuring independents who voted for Obama but say they will not do so again in 2012.
