How did Newt Gingrich fall so far so fast in Iowa polling? A big reason is the massive ad campaign that are blanketing the state partially in an attempt to take him down.
And when we say blanketing, we mean it. A pro-Mitt Romney Super PAC has already spent $3.1 million on ads building up their guy in Iowa. That’s double what the entire GOP primary field spent on Iowa advertising in 2008.
Now the same group, Restore Our Future, is spending the same amount on ads attacking Gingrich. The AP reports the Super PAC will buy $1.4 million in ads attacking Gingrich this week, bringing their total spending to $3 million.
That’s in addition to anti-Gingrich ads coming from Ron Paul, Rick Perry and others.
But it’s Romney doing the bulk of the work on Gingrich’s once-high Iowa poll numbers. On Monday, NBC news reported Restore Our Future is outspending Gingrich 34-1.
As he starts to abandon his all-positive campaign, Gingrich’s campaign is buying up around $222,000 in air time over the next week in Iowa, according to the Wall Street Journal. (Perry is no slouch, however: his ad spending plus that of groups allied with him will total around $800,000, the Journal reported.)
But clearly that’s barely a dent in the volume of spending coming at Gingrich. Polls show the spending has worked. As Politico noted Monday, respondents to the latest ABC/Washington Post poll shows Republicans don’t like the political life Gingrich has led since leaving office, the main focus of the campaign aimed at him.
It’s worth noting that this unprecedented GOP ad campaign Romney is waging may have taken Gingrich out of contention for the top spot in the state, but it hasn’t done much for Romney’s numbers. He’s still running second despite dumping millions on Iowa through his own ads and those from his supporters.
Evan McMorris-Santoro
Evan McMorris-Santoro has covered politics for TPM since 2009. Before that, he was a reporter at National Journal’s Hotline covering election 2008. He started his career covering local politics at newspapers in TN and his native NC.
@David I think it's mostly subliminal: People hear them and see them out of the corners of their eyes while they're doing other things, or vegging out in front of the tube, and pretty soon it's just embedded in their brain somewhere that Candidate X is a scumbag. I mean the message is usually pretty simple: Four legs good, two legs bad sort of stuff.
Just call it the "What-you-tell-me-20,000-times-is-true" principle.
Of course it never hurts if Candidate X really IS a scumbag, as in this case.
David Well, the ads pointing out that Romney is a reliable Conservative are flopping because they're such obviously lies. But the ads pointing out that Gingrich is a disaster and a scumbag who Obama could ignore throughout the election and still win are having an effect because they're so obviously true. Iowans aren't giving up their strong distaste for Romney, only their brief and always doomed like for Gingrich.
So basically Romney is parachuting containers of money into Iowa these last few weeks after pretty much ignoring IA the rest of the year. Iowans are taking the money and thumbing their nose at Gingrich while at the same time boosting Ron Paul to IA frontrunner status. And establishment GOPS in IA are worried about IA becoming irrelevant? Can't imagine why.
After all these years, I still can't understand how *anybody* in this country could be so stupid as to believe or pay attention to *anything* they see in campaign advertising. Who doesn't know that they're all lies, if not in one way than in another? Who actually bothers to sit through them instead of just switching the channel when the gloomy drone of the 'bad news' announcer comes on (I think they must all use the same guy) and the artificially-grained black and white photos come floating past? How can people let themselves be manipulated in this blatantly obvious way? At least make the propagandists *work* to earn their keep with something a little bit subtle.
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