Weigel

Where’s the Republican Version of the Bain Ads?

CLEVELAND, Ohio – If Mitt Romney manages to lose this election, it will be because Hispanic voters turned against him and never looked back, and because the economic fundamentals in swing states were not quite bad enough to spur voters to oust the incumbent. It will also, on the margins, be due to a lot of wasted Super PAC money on ads that didn’t connect emotionally.

Here. This is an American Crossroads ad that runs all the time in Cuyahoga County.

This one’s from the pro-Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future.

Now, compare this to the ad Priorities USA has put up in the state.

Gut check: Which ad is more emotionally gripping? The one with the lady complaining about the economy complaining about the economy while watching “Morning Joe” on an iPad that retails at (at least) $449? The stock footage of doctors running? Or the micro-documentary with angry workers, with names, who are angry that Mitt Romney’s company screwed them over?

That’s a rhetorical question. An actual question: With all the money that Romney and his allies had, they couldn’t send a research team and film crew to find some angry workers in the Columbus suburbs who make less now than they did in 2008? Bob Shrum wrote the playbook for this 18 years ago. Last year, the Romney campaign even ran a few web ads in which put-upon people explained how much tougher the economy had gotten in Michigan and New Hampshire. Some smart Super PAC could have made a poor suburb famous. It never happened.