Newt Gingrich may be popular among segments of the Republican Party, but his extreme views are proving to be a liability overall. Pouncing on the opportunity, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is hoping to capitalize on the anti-Newt sentiment with an online ad campaign.
Beginning on Friday and running for a few weeks, ads will appear on Google and Facebook, asking viewers to join the DSCC in opposing Newt’s anti-child labor laws talking point. This has so far been one of the more surprising platforms of Newt’s campaign: he has called for removing most janitors from schools — generally union employees — and replacing them with adolescents and teenagers from poor communities who, Newt claims, don’t learn how to work and earn money at home. The DSCC’s ads will link to a petition asking signers to send Newt a message opposing this plan.
This isn’t the first time, and surely it won’t be the last time, that Democrats are using the bizarre stance of a candidate to bolster their own outreach efforts. The DSCC also used ads to rally supporters with an anti-Rick Perry petition targeting Perry’s claims that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. The DSCC also put up anti-Michele Bachmann ads that would pop up after Google searches with key terms. Each time, the DSCC directed supporters to their own site.
It’s not a stretch to see why many Republicans fear a Gingrich nomination — and Bachmann or Perry’s for that matter — because their extremism on certain issues is likely to hurt the party overall. In fact, the DSCC used Newt just last week as a weapon in one of their own races in Virginia, blasting an email to supporters that compared Newt to Republican Senate candidate George Allen.
The Committee is doing exactly what some conservatives fear would happen on a much larger scale if Newt is the nominee. As MSNBC host Joe Scarborough put it recently, “The Republicans I talk to say he cannot win the nomination at any cost: he will destroy the party.”
