American Crossroads and its affiliate Crossroads GPS are going up today with their biggest paid media push so far in the 2012 cycle, with a $16 million one-week buy on TV and radio in eight presidential battlegrounds and four Senate contests, POLITICO has learned.
On the presidential level, American Crossroads will spend $11 million on a spot called “Actually Happened,” which focuses on the impact that President Obama said the stimulus would have on the unemployment rate. The spot features a man using charts and graphics to show where the president said unemployment would be around now, under 5.5 percent, compared to where it is, at 8.1 percent.
And, after reading the article, all I can manage is a shrug. Four years ago I would have been blogging furiously about this. ( I would also gleefully be pointing out that the graph in this ad showing unemployment figures was moving downward.) I would have been calling everyone to arms. And while I’m not advocating for complacency – because GOTV efforts and countering these ads is critically, vitally important – I will point out that after the last four years of Republican hysteria over everything Obama I’m kinda numb to it. And I’m starting to think the American people are as well.
For four years we’ve heard Republicans screaming hysterically about how the ACA would create Death Panels and Kill Grandmom. We’ve heard from the Birthers (and are still hearing from them) and watched as they launched investigations and went to court trying to oust the Kenyan Usurper. We listened as Reverend Wright morphed into “foreign” and “not American” to “Food Stamp President” to a thousand more ways to make Obama the scary “other.” We have heard lies about Obama raising taxes; lies about ending work requirements for welfare, lies about giving black people cell phones. We’ve even heard that Obama’s father isn’t his real father. There are many more examples, but I don’t have all year to write this post!
And it’s these lies combined with a unprecedented level of sustained hysteria that has me feeling numb. No one can take this constant outrage seriously. There’s simply too much. If everything is an outrage, then nothing is. And that’s a problem. When you cry wolf all the flippin’ time people stop listening… They also stop believing you.