If mere clip art, as the New York Times tells us, can cause someone to kill, imagine what the images of a Congressman pushing an elderly woman in a wheelchair off a cliff can inspire:
As Mark Hemingway quips at the Weekly Standard, “It’s the subtlety here that you really have to appreciate. I mean, here is a liberal group that has total faith that Americans want to understand the issues and make informed policy choices.”
Hemingway adds, “A friend on twitter observes that The Agenda Project’s website says the group’s goal is to ‘build a powerful, intelligent, well-connected political movement capable of identifying and advancing rational, effective ideas in the public debate and in so doing ensure our country’s enduring success.'”
Rational — you use that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
Philip Klein, who’s more in touch with economic reality than the authors of this spot, wonders when we’ll see an ad showing granny pushing kids off a cliff as an homage to the unsustainability of Boomer-heavy Medicare rolls. Would that ad be accurate, though? Young adults are famously pro-Obama; they’re inviting their own fleecing by supporting the guardian of an outdated, fiscally ruinous entitlement system. An ad that’s truer to life would have them tossing money at granny and then diving headfirst off the cliff voluntarily.
And it’s a helluva drop, as Nick Gillespie of Reason pointed out in 2009:
But look on the bright side. If Democrats are condoning images of pushing grandma off a cliff, then Republican campaign managers are totally inoculated for next year: anything goes, boys! Just point to this ad as your defense, when the MSM complains.
(See also: LBJ’s Daisy ad from 1964, or Harry Truman comparing his opponent to Hitler.)
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