The folks at American Liberty Coalition have crafted a powerful antiwar ad promoting Ron Paul for president. This minute long ad conveys Ron Paul’s passion and his concern about the ruinous costs of the current wars and the peril of Bush attacking Iran.
The Liberty Coalition solicited donations to help pay for airing the ad, and this may have contributed to the Paul campaign’s 16% tally in the Pennsylvania primary. Their efforts – and the elbow grease of many other volunteers in Pennsylvania – made a big difference.
The private ad is in sharp contrast to this “Ron Paul – Conservative Choice” radio ad created by the Paul campaign and run on Pennsylvania stations. The ad seems confusing and diffident. It starts out mentioning amnesty for illegal aliens and campaign finance reform’s restrictions on free speech – but doesn’t specify that these are John McCain positions. The ad mentions that Ron Paul has received more contributions from active duty military than all other candidates combined – but fails to mention that this is largely the result of Paul’s staunch opposition to the Iraq debacle.
It is good that Ron Paul got 128,000 votes in Pennsylvania. But how many more votes might the campaign have harvested across the nation if they had used the $35 million Americans donated to them to send a clear antiwar message from start to finish?
I would be curious to know the impressions of Pennsylvanians (and others) on how the campaign there played out.