Elizabeth Warren’s viral rant about evil factory owners who live off others has damaged the Obama campaign, which foolishly inserted similar language into the teleprompter which then was read by Obama.
The “you didn’t build that” narrative was more than a single line, it was an articulation of Obama’s political ethos, and it is the centerpiece of an effective Romney campaign theme which shows no signs of letting up.
But Warren also has hurt her own campaign, as reintroduction of that rant from last fall on the national stage has opened the road for Scott Brown to hammer Warren as an elitist, out-of-touch radical who has departed from the Democratic heroes of Massachusetts past:
Warren has tried to talk out of both sides of her mouth, espousing collectivist views which do not play even in Masschusetts while presenting herself as just a hard working middle class gal in her massive advertising.
Warren’s Cherokee problem exposed her a poseur, and the “you didn’t build that” rant exposed her as …
Maybe Brown should have used the line “there she goes again.”
Update: I just noticed this frame near the end of the video:
Brown and Romney need to roll out commercials featuring this image…
You own a lemonade stand, kid, good for you … but I want to be clear, those lemons were moved to market on roads the rest of us paid for ….
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Comments
We absolutely have to win the senate, as well as the presidency and the house. So, I may end up sending Brown some California dollars again this time around. This ad helps motivate me in that regard.
That’s a great ad. It’s long for TV, of course, but as a web video it’s superb. I’m sure the Brown campaign can do a shorter one for TV.
It would be great if other conservative candidates around the country would do similar ads. This could be a theme that unites conservatives the way they were united in 1994 with the ‘Compact with America’.
A ‘You Built That!’ campaign, showing NOT just what people have done in their own lives and their own industry to build businesses, etc., but ALSO to show how all their hard work and sacrifice enriched the entire community, would be an ad the Democrats simply could not match.
Show how the hard work of building a small business paid off not just for the owner and her employees, but also the Little League team the owner sponsored. The tradesman who helped rebuild a town after a tornado. The restaurant owner who helps feed the homeless at a church basement soup kitchen.
And so on.
The people who build things in our country do so not just for themselves and their families but for everyone around them. And they do more than just build THEIR business, they build other things that enrich us all.
Show that. Obama can’t touch it. He’s never built anything.
Fantastic idea! It’s a great, succinct message that can be carried out locally, by all candidates. But they need to be short enough to run on tv, not just the internet.
1. This.
2. Self-respect is an essential part of the American Dream. Material prosperity is welcome, but a major part of the satisfaction is that the prosperity was earned: earned by the efforts of people in their individual circumstances.
3. The desire for self-improvement is an essential part of the American character. It finds perhaps its most important outlet in economic activity, but it is not restricted to economic activity. It starts with the individual, not with mandates by elite social engineers.
4. It is essential for Republicans to communicate that they are not talking only about entrepreneurs. A Romney speech alluded, iirc to people who attend night school in order to qualify for a promotion. More like this, please.
5. Material prosperity makes individual initiative feasible, but don’t restrict the message to economics; don’t forget people who, e.g. learn to play an instrument and join a community orchestra late in life. The bad economy is an overriding issue, but don’t forget to envision the quality of life which a good economy makes possible.
6. Above all, don’t forget to appeal to American optimism.
Good ideas all, and one of them can be used to sell fiscal responsibility to leftists:
“The bad economy is an overriding issue, but don’t forget to envision the quality of life which a good economy makes possible.”
I’d have tax and spend liberals know that a booming business economy is their best friend too, in that it is far easier to pass spending bills when the till is flush.
Cynically, I’d flesh out the message to liberals with easy to understand equations:
Economy good = Tax receipts up, spending ‘may’ go up.
Economy bad = Tax receipts down, spending will go down.
I actually don’t really like this ad. It takes too long to hammer the point home. The Romney version of this was superb. This makes me think that Brown is running against Obama. Plus it seems a little long.
Yea, it does take a little to long to make the point. Get it down to 30 to 50 seconds, and just use Kennedy’s and Johnson’s audio to show how far to the mainstream Warren is.
Yeah, just a hard working middle class gal,
with a net worth of 15 MILLION DOLLARS,
Warren’s Cherokee problem exposed her a poseur, and the “you didn’t build that” rant exposed her as …
A. A complete idiot
B. A moonbat’s moonbat
C. A lefty whacko
D. A delusional psycho
E. All of the above
F. Pandering bullshitter
This post might need a correction- from the accounts that I read, Obama was not using his teleprompter in Roanoke. According to news coverage, his staff had recently made a decision to try to wean him off it. Goody for us, but I’m sure they’re rethinking that brilliant strategy. He’s worse than Biden without it!
Brown and Romney need to roll out commercials featuring this image…
And they ought to ask Mark Steyn for permission to use a few of his killer lines of prose.
Right there is your commercial.
1. PhillyGuy and McCoy2k could have a point that the ad is too long. Maybe just keep JFK, Reagan and Clinton. And the Blightworker.
However, the shot of Warren is perfect by contrast. The rage at her core is stark to see.
2. The leftist site I monitor (but do not send traffic to) is screaming about the unfairness of Brown’s ad. They always let us know what they fear.
3. There are a couple of links in my (cough! cough!) comment at the Tip Line:
4. How sweet it would be if Obama and Warren sank each other’s campaigns. To repeat, let’s not get cocky.
5. Scott Brown had better watch his step. If he keeps this up, he could be accused of being a Republican. 😉
…my comment at the Tip Line…
Obamateurism of the Day–hotair. Always good for an eye roll or two!
Maybe they also need a “your boss built that, are you glad to have a job?” campaign. There are more workers than owners, and Obama tries to set them at odds. So maybe uniting them is a good strategy?
“I built it, and thanks to my hard working employees, we’ve grown even bigger”. Obama doesn’t mention employees as part of the owner’s team, he mentions government that built roads and government supplied teachers.
Building that team is a big part of building the company. Not just hiring and paying them, but developing them. Much of a worker’s development is on the job training. So when Obama says “someone along the way helped you get there”, that person is usually the private company that has to train people how to actually get the job done, AFTER they’ve gone through some often meaningless scholastics.
Unions are at odds with their bosses, but I’d guess most other workers are glad to have a job, and don’t think their boss is a scoundrel. Many got their real world education from their boss, and are proud of their workmanship.
These are all great suggestions for a nationwide coordinating theme, which would be awesome. But if the RNC ad that I just saw a few minutes ago is any indication, we’re certainly not there yet. The ad focused on the failures of Obama’s term, but the tag line was “He tried. You tried. It’s ok to make a change.” I understand that they have want to pursue a strategy of capturing the independents through sympathy, rather than derision, but I sure hope they don’t stick to that theme all the way through November.
“We – the rest of us – built roads for you. We paid for your education. We hired firefighters and police to keep you safe. So why didn’t you build a factory? Why didn’t you start a small business? Why, you didn’t even open a simple lemonade stand! Deadbeat.”
We need the House, Senate and White House. Remember that.
Mitt Romney has got this subject nailed…
Look at him on Kudlow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNZx3R0P2Kc&feature=player_embedded
[…] PROF. JACOBSON: Elizabeth Warren damages two campaigns with one rant. […]
Warren isn’t the underdog yet, by a long shot. But she is vulnerable on these two major issues that even the Massachusetts electorate will have to ponder. First term Senators are the most vulnerable, remember, and especially those who won in special elections to finish another’s term.
She shouldn’t need or get any extra help, though, she’s already the top fundraiser of the cycle for Senate challengers.
And it is giving her too much credit that her “someone else built that” speech could sink Obama. HE hired HER, remember – she just couldn’t even be confirmed by a Democratic Senate because she is so far left. But they are birds of a feather.
Obama said what he said because it is what he believes.
Besides, let Warren sink her own campaign. Barry can handle his own as well as he handles the country.
State and local governments have been shutting down lemonade stands for a few years now. It’s a pet peeve of my favorite econ blogger, Professor Mark Perry at the blog Carpe Diem. He’s blogged a few times over the past 2 or 3 summers about the ongoing “war on lemonade stands”.
Google the words “war on lemonade” and Google will return about 87 million entries. This Forbes article was the top entry when I Googled that phrase. It’s titled, “The Inexplicable War On Lemonade Stands”.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/08/03/the-inexplicable-war-on-lemonade-stands/
So, I like your idea, but many local governments don’t let kids run lemonade stands anymore.
What about the 100 million adults that don’t even file returns … did they pay for the roads and fund the teachers?
And for all of those, and another 70 million adult filers that pay no income tax, do they really want Obama to destroy the companies of those that are a success, given that they are paying for almost all the entitlements?
What we really need to deal with is the corruption at every level. But politicians are neck deep in special “deals”. Obama’s Chicago way regime is perhaps the pinnacle.
Obama’s gang seems set on regime change … changing the whole system to something with more control (like fascism), deepening the corruption. Instead of rewarding success and efficiency, the government mob distributes rewards, rewarding political friends, punishing political enemies.
Hoisted. Own. Petard.
But, they are Democrats, so they’re held to a standard beneath people with normal scruples, morals and intelligence.
I’m still trying to figure out how the “offending” company’s taxes are excluded from road building in the first place, Pocahontas.
[…] Things have only gotten worse in the last 30 months. The Hill ran a poll the other day: “It found that 66 percent believe paltry job growth and slow economic recovery is the result of bad policy. Thirty-four percent say Obama is the most to blame.” Gallup: “By more than 2-1, 63%-29%, those surveyed say Romney’s background in business, including his tenure at the private equity firm Bain Capital, would cause him to make good decisions, not bad ones, in dealing with the nation’s economic problems.” Thus the Brown campaign apparently made the decision to run against the president, who is significantly less popular today than when Brown defeated Martha Coakley in 2010. HT: Professor Jacobson […]
I think the appropriate comeback to the “Government built the roads” is “the government got the money from the business owners through taxation to build those roads – so yeah, we built those too!”
Yeah, but, but, but.. the government > printed < the money the business owners made and had taken via taxation to build roads.