“We can’t wage a perpetual campaign where the only goal is to see who can get the most embarrassing headlines about the other side — a belief that if you lose, I win,” President Obama said last night in his State of the Union address.
But 14 minutes before Obama’s speech ended, the Democratic National Committee had clipped some reaction video from the Republican side of the chamber and sent it to reporters with an embarrassing headline.
“Republicans Sit on Hands as POTUS Calls for Banks to Pay Back Bailout Funds,” was the subject line on a 10:06 p.m. press release from the DNC, along with the first of several Web videos showcasing Republican reactions during the speech.
When Obama talked about the health care bill bringing down the deficit “by as much as $1 trillion,” Democrats applauded. The Republicans looked around at each other, and especially to Minority Leader John Boehner and Minority Whip Eric Cantor, to see if they were applauding.
There were several potential GOP traps in the speech, and the DNC somehow caught each, and clipped them into Web videos like this one: “No Republicans Stand for Passing a Jobs Bill.”
And this one: “No Republicans Stand for Small Business Tax Cut.”
You get the idea.
The ads are on the Web – for now – and officials suggest we might see them on television before the fall elections.
Obama even noticed the lack of applause for popular ideas himself, quipping after a line about tax cuts for 8 million people paying for college, “I thought I’d get some applause on that one.”
Here’s the first of the DNC’s Web ads:
