Citizens United — yes, that Citizens United, the group whose trip to the Supreme Court opened the floodgates of unlimited nearly-anonymous corporate money into our elections — has a TV ad to promote their new propaganda film, Battle for America. The ad features political mercenary Dick Morris opining:
The stakes on November 2nd are just unbelievably important. [Obama] has no understanding of how to be President. About anything that requires doing his job, he's totally at a loss about it. You're trying to control your own destiny, you're trying to protect your family, and you're trying to save your own country. Elections have consequences.
The existence of the movie is no surprise. Neither is the ad for it. What I found remarkable, though, is that the ad ran tonight on MSNBC during both Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The Rachel Maddow Show (at least on my cable system, Comcast in San Francisco, CA; it did not run in tonight's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell).
Dick Morris was an advisor to Bill Clinton, back in Arkansas when he was governor and again in Washington when he was President. He had a falling out (to put it mildly) with the Clintons, and went on to work with Citizens United to produce a "documentary" about Hillary Clinton for the 2008 primary campaign season. The film broke the rules on how far corporate money could go towards directly telling people to vote for or against a specific candidate, but the Supreme Court struck down those limitations. Dick Morris is also a contributor at Fox News.
Morris and CU are back with a new DVD, starring a "who's who" of right-wing Republican Tea Party wingnuts: Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs, Newt Gingrich, Tony Blankley, Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Sacramento, CA), and Senators Kit Bond (R–MO) and Tom Coburn (R–OK), among others. They simultaneously argue that the Obama Administration is out to destroy everything America holds dear within four short years, and yet the Obama Administration is so utterly incompetent that it can't get anything done.
I was quite surprised to see this DVD advertised on MSNBC, and especially on Olbermann and Maddow. Of course, I don't expect either of them or anyone on their staffs to keep tabs on who runs ads on their shows; indeed, it would in general be a bad thing if they did. It surprises me, though, that Citizens United would think they would be able to appeal to enough of the MSNBC audience to make it worth the cost of running the ad. It's not like they're particularly subtle, either: the Citizens United logo shows up right there in the ad, just before the secret Kenyan Muslim socialist viciously swears to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. (I had not previously realized, though, that Obama took the oath of office while standing in front of a jet engine.)
Is Dick Morris expecting to sucker in some sizable chunk of Keith and/or Rachel's audience? Or is he simply thumbing his nose at them by throwing around his corporate-funded largesse?