A RINO group called the Lincoln Project, run by the likes of George Conway, is rolling out an ad on Saturday that, using a strange comparison that will not fly and employing the president’s words out of context, criticizes Trump on his handling of the virus response.

As someone who has produced and directed scores of political ads in several communications mediums I have a pretty good appreciation for the aesthetics of a spot and, more important, the effectiveness of one. Be advised, they can be two different things.

A unsophisticated ad with a simple, even crude, message targeted at the right people at the right time can work well. An ad can also look and sound great and fail to hit the mark. So much so that when I previewed a spot to a campaign team, if I or they liked it too much in the aesthetic sense —it’s art, graphics, voice-over, music, etc.— I was immediately suspicious of the commercial because our job was not to impress ourselves. Our job was to impress voters.

And now we come back to the RINO ad. The Lincoln Project is a group that opposes President Trump’s re-election and is working for the election of Joe Biden. Thus, they’ve actually lost even the “name only” status. Their ad spotlights the president’s comments in March that he didn’t “take responsibility at all” for a widespread lack of coronavirus testing. Taking the whole statement in context, what he meant was that he was not personally responsible (as he wasn’t) for every facet of the virus response and that much of the effort was executed at the state and local level. Quite a cogent and reasonable statement.

But the RINO spot lamely highlights the late Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower (“Ike”) and recounts how, as the Allied commander in charge of the successful World War II D-Day landings in Europe, he was prepared to take responsibility if the massive operation had failed. The ad hit on June 6th, the D-Day anniversary. “Great leaders prepare for every eventuality. They hope for the best, but they prepare for the worst,” Ike said. Then it, as mentioned before, takes the president’s words out of context and makes the unfavorable comparison with Eisenhower. The ad implicitly sides with the rioters, surprisingly seems to have a voice-over from apparently former GOP actor Tom Selleck —who played Ike in a TV movie—  and makes good use of music, graphics, and the likely Selleck narration.

What the ad doesn’t do is greatly upset any pro-Trump Republicans, motivate any anti-Trump Republicans, or make a logical case for the strange comparison with Ike. The Ike ploy is odd because comparing D-Day in all its aspects to one statement by the president strains even the most flexible credulity. It won’t play with anyone who isn’t already biased against the president, and even they will yawn and switch the channel.

Its sole purpose is to remind Joe Biden and his team that there are yesterday’s news GOP collaborators working for him off the grid and that they expect their share of the spoils if he wins in November.

The sad lonely group is made up of George Conway, the husband of senior White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, and losing Republican operatives John Weaver, Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson. The out of touch threesome were aides to the late Senator John McCain. Weaver was also the top political adviser for then-Ohio Governor John Kasich’s laughable 2016 presidential campaign.

The RINO assemblage says the spot will appear online starting Saturday and will run on television in DC and other markets starting on Tuesday. The president has labeled them a “group of RINO Republicans who failed badly.” He is quite correct in that assessment.

This piece was written by David Kamioner on June 7, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

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