Joan Walsh says the condescension is stunning:
In the 60-second spot, which ran on the Sunday shows as well as reportedly in Colorado and North Carolina, a lovely, latte-skinned young woman in a pink shirt and pearls is sitting on her white sofa, complaining about a man she met online: âIn 2008, I fell in love. His online profile made him seem so perfect. Smart, handsome, charming, articulate.â We see her MacBook screen, and there he is: the cad she calls âBarack,â President Obama.
Yes, admaker Rick Wilson and Americans for Shared Prosperity believe the way to convince women to vote for Republicans is to compare the president to a bad boyfriend. Obviously they think weâre idiots who put romance before reason, even in politics.
Naturally it diminishes Obama, too: Our first black president is just another pair of pants, a smooth-talking liar who let us down. But hell, he is kind of cute, which is obviously why he won the womenâs vote over John McCain and Mitt Romney. Oh, and heâs also âarticulate.â
Not all women are idiots, of course, but a woman would have to be an idiot to vote Republican. So while the ad is offensiveâWalsh is absolutely rightâit seems to me that the GOP has correctly identified those women who might be persuaded to vote Republican: the idiotic ones.