The media is full of criticism today about the older ad, where the McCain campaign takes issue with Obama's refusal to honor his commitment to visiting the troops in Germany, which has run far more than the original ad buy accounted for by news shows running it hundreds of times.
The number of times Senator John McCain’s new advertisement attacking Senator Barack Obama for canceling a visit with wounded troops in Germany last week has been shown fully or partly on local, national and cable newscasts: well into the hundreds.
The number of times that spot actually, truly ran as a paid commercial: roughly a dozen.
Result for Mr. McCain: a public relations coup that allowed him to show his toughest campaign advertisement of the year — one widely panned as misleading — to millions of people, largely free, through television news media hungry for political news with arresting visual imagery.
Political campaigns have for years sought to broadcast their ads free by making them intriguing enough to draw wide coverage from news outlets.
You always know when an ad is being effective and doing the job it was intended to do when the opposing political party pundits start howling at the moon.
The best saved for last of course is the hysterical concept of the NYT daring speak of the "low road", to which Ed Morrisey over at Hot Air takes them to woodshed while offering some visual reminders of how the NYT and the Obama campaign have stayed on the low road and are now whining about John McCain fighting back.
Hysterical...go read Ed's piece.
Finally the John McCain campaign is making it clear they are in the fight and have stopped taking punches without landing a few hard hitting ones of their own.
The next couple months will be popcorn worthy so make sure you are stocked up!
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