Friday, September 08, 2006

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

It was just announced today that Jim Webb was going to run a new campaign ad which featured Ronald Reagan talking about some of his accommodations while serving in the military. After seeing the ad, I have made the comment that this particular ad should have been put on television back in July. It is simple and basically gives an introduction to Jim Webb. If he wanted to send out ads, it would have to be something along the lines of what it is he STANDS for or against.

However, as soon as this news was released about the new ad, a response was made from an unlikely source: Nancy Reagan. Mrs. Reagan announced that she wanted Jim Webb to pull the campaign a from television spots because it falsely uses her late husband’s image to spread messages he never said.

Already Democrat bloggers are screaming at the top of their heads that they screwed up big time. In addition to this fiasco, the folks over at Raising Kaine could be looking at some legal trouble in regards to soft money, and the most recent Mason Dixon poll shows George Allen once again leading Jim Webb.

Fact of the Matter

The fact of the matter is that Jim Webb is in trouble. First of all, I have contended for the past few weeks that Webb’s poll numbers have been nothing more than transparent figures. If you replaced his name with folding chair after the whole Macaca-gate scandal, the folding chair would have done just as well. Now that we are getting further away from the late summer scandal, people are beginning to wonder where Jim Webb is.

Add this to the fact that his new campaign ad has been asked not to air by a former First Lady, Webb is in a rather precarious situation. If he airs the ad, he might as well get ready to see every Reagan lover in Virginia rally to vote against him because of the pain he is causing an elderly widow who had to watch the love of her life die right before her eyes for fifteen years. If he decides to pull the ad, he has just wasted a great deal of much needed money on an ad spot that could have helped it. No matter how you look at it, Webb is damned either way.

So what will he do? While I don’t have the answer, I think Webb is going to need to look into some form of damage control as the inmates are seemingly running the asylum. If any of the allegations about Raising Kaine is true, then he could be looking at some FCC problems. How people are going to spin this will be very interesting.

2 comments:

asgcam said...

Jim Webb, like many cross over voters, loved and respected the great Ronald Reagan. (And was appointed by Reagan to be his Secretary of the Navy)

Reagan, who started out as a Democrat and ended up as the greatest Republican of them all, once said he didn't leave the Democratic Party...the Democratic Party left him. Now that the most extreme elements of the right wing have hijacked the Republican Party, we cross over voters say "We didn't leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left us."

BDM said...

"Cross over voters" is a kind phrase since we both know that a number of folks are governed by their pocket books and look for the candidate that puts more green into it.

Besides, this is an issue where Webb either respects the wishes of a widow or basically says, "No. Screw your wishes, I am going to do what I want with your dead husband's image."

You can love and respect a person till you are blue in the face (no pun intended), but the fact is that you still have to decide whether or not to do the RIGHT thing, or the WRONG thing.