MoveOn.org fires first salvo of the general election with TV attack ad

Activists put GOP on defensive with jujitsu move that uses “family values” to floor McCain on Iraq issue

MoveOn.org debuted a political television ad Wednesday it says is testing better with preview audiences than any ad the progressive nonprofit has ever made.

The ad uses a young mother and her cooing baby to attack John McCain for his infamous remark about how the United States might be in Iraq for 100 years.

The defiant, heart-string-pulling spot, titled “Not Alex,” is airing nationally on CNN and MSNBC for a week. It’s the first major salvo of independently financed attack ads to appear in the general campaign. MoveOn and its partner in the ad, the labor union AFSCME, made additional buys here in Michigan and in the battleground states Ohio and Wisconsin.

Continued -McCain has since explained that in making his comment, he was talking not about active warfare but about a noncombative presence such as the U.S. military has currently in Germany, Japan and South Korea.

A presence well planned for, since the Bush administration has already spent an unknown number of tax dollars building permanent bases in Iraq, even as Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is calling for full or near-full withdrawal from the country within the first six months of 2009.

MoveOn.org, a political action committee that supported Obama in the primary season, defends the ad’s use of the “100 years” remark with documentation of three recent quotes where the presumed Republican nominee asserted that war with radical Islamists might last for the remainder of the century.

One is below:

While speaking at a town hall meeting in Sun City Center, Fla., McCain said, “I’d like to look you in the eye and tell you there’s not gonna be any more wars. I’d like to look you in the eyes and tell you that this terrible evil called radical Islamic extremism is defeated. I can’t do that. I’ve got to tell you that we’re gonna be in this struggle for the rest of this century because it’s a transcendent evil.” [Town hall meeting; Sun City Center, Fla., 01/26/08; emphasis added]

Though the ad names Iraq specifically, it also hints at the larger GOP platform of continued military aggression in the Middle East. McCain has echoed George Bush in saber-rattling with Iran, for instance.

Beyond raising awareness about the more hawkish agenda of McCain, the ad by its very existence also makes a vivid commentary on the Iraq War itself.

It would never fly – would have never tested well in focus groups – if the creators had made it in 1944 and substituted the name “Franklin Roosevelt” for “John McCain” and switched out the word “Iraq” with the phrase “the wars against Germany and imperial Japan.”

The mere existence of this ad illustrates the dearth of any overriding sense among the public that the war is being waged as a matter of national defense, or that its stakes involve our survival as a nation. Mothers, the ad suggests intentionally or not, are not willing to give up their children for a war that is about anything less. And that includes any protracted conflict against Muslim extremism or effort at empire-building that might necessitate today’s babes in arms becoming 2025′s men at arms.

For its part, the Republican National Committee responded to the ad this way, as cited in the Chicago Tribune:

The Republican National Committee, taking questions about the ad referred by the McCain campaign, said the country needs a president who listens to commanders, not partisan groups like MoveOn.org, according to The Associated Press. “Bringing peace and security to Iraq will require a commander in chief who won’t allow partisanship to cloud his judgment,” said RNC spokesman Alex Conant.

The ad was also discussed on Wednesday’s “Hannity and Colmes” show on Fox News with guest George Will, who admitted that the ad put McCain on the defensive.

In an email blast sent out to its 3.3 million members, MoveOn.org included some details about how well the ad was received in tests conducted by the strategic consulting firm Greenberg, Quinlan, and Rosner, whose other clients include the Chicago Cubs and the AARP: