During Sunday’s Republican debate, even Senator John McCain’s rivals had to give him credit for turning in a good performance, especially with a clearly scripted, but nonetheless show-stopping line about Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s support for a Woodstock museum, saying he wasn’t at the concert because “I was tied up at the time.” Tied up, that is, in Vietnam, as a P.O.W.

Now Mr. McCain’s campaign is putting it to use in a television spot that it says is to begin running in New Hampshire, featuring shots of Woodstock, images from Mr. McCain at the debate itself and, finally, the haunting, grainy footage of him in the prison, lying on his back, holding a cigarette. The spot is not only likely to draw some attention, but it also has something that has not yet been seen in a campaign television commercial: A shot of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, in this case heartily laughing at Mr. McCain’s one-liner. Watch the Ad

Barack Obama’s campaign will begin airing a new ad in New Hampshire today, implicitly suggesting that his Democratic rivals are stuck in “conventional thinking.”

Titled “Conventional,” the 30-second spot features Mr. Obama, pictured in red tie and shirtsleeves, declaring in a voice-over that he would reach out to both friends and enemies of the United States.

“We are a beacon of light around the world,” he said, speaking forcefully. “At least that’s what we can be again. That’s what we should be again.”

“When we break out of the conventional thinking and we start reaching out to friend and foe alike, then I am absolutely confident that we can restore America’s leadership in the world.” Read more …

Senator Hillary Clinton has a new radio spot up in South Carolina. It is her second, and like the first, it underscores how intensely she’s going after black women voters.

It opens with a male narrator conveying that Mrs. Clinton has a long record of working on behalf of children, specifically in South Carolina. “Thirty five years ago, a young woman came to South Carolina to help the Children’s Defense Fund seek justice for our kids,” he says. “Thirty five years later, she’s still fighting for them.”

Mrs. Clinton then speaks. “There’s a tribe in Africa, I think it’s the Masai, and when you meet on the trail, they don’t say, ‘How are you?’ They say, ‘How are the children?’”
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Mitt Romney is still swamping his Democratic and Republican rivals in advertising spending, according to Nielsen data released today. So far this year, Mr. Romney placed 10,893 political ads, mostly in Iowa.

None of Mr. Romney’s Republican opponents even approached his advertising totals. Rudolph W. Giuliani has only run ads on the radio — ­ 642 spots so far. John McCain and Fred Thompson only began running ads last month — Mr. McCain in New Hampshire and Mr. Thompson on national cable.

On the Democratic side, Bill Richardson placed 5,975 ads, more than any of his rivals. Barack Obama placed 4,293, and Hillary Clinton about half that.

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign Web site, hillaryclinton.com, has attracted the most visitors — 759,000 so far, but Mr. Obama’s site was right behind, with 749,000 visitors.
Nielsen also reported that 71 percent of all the ads were placed in Iowa, and nearly 95 percent of them ran on local television.

Senator Barack Obama unveiled a new television ad in Iowa today starring General Merrill A. McPeak, a former combat pilot and Air Force veteran who has endorsed Mr. Obama.

“As a combat pilot and Air Force chief during Desert Storm, lives depended on the judgments I made,” says the four-star general, who served as the Air Force’s highest-ranking uniformed officer back then, in the ad. “And judgment is what we need from our next commander in chief. Barack Obama opposed this war in Iraq from the start, showing insight and courage others did not.”

In a conference call with reporters this morning, General McPeak said that he has gotten to know Mr. Obama this year after a Senate staff member arranged for the two to meet.

After supporting George W. Bush in the 2000 election, General McPeak became an outspoken opponent of the war in Iraq, and in 2004 endorsed John Kerry. In ads sponsored by the Democratic National Committee, he praised Mr. Kerry, saying that he “has the strength and common sense we need in a commander in chief.”

This morning, General McPeak also fielded questions about the flag lapel pin that Mr. Obama said yesterday he stopped wearing years ago. The controversy
over the “pin-flap nonsense,” General McPeak said, is “gotcha politics.”

Gov. Bill Richardson’s latest ad seeks to draw a distinction between his position on Iraq and that of the other Democratic presidential candidates. But in this case, the subtext of the spot—that the New Mexico governor cares about the netroots—is almost more important than the primary message.

The spot features three influential liberal bloggers, most notably Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers of OpenLeft (though perhaps more famous for the work on MyDD), as well as Christina Siun O’Connell of Firedoglake.

“You can read their plans. Bill Richardson is the only major candidate who would bring
every soldier home,” Mr. Bowers says in the spot, after Mr. Stoller notes that the other candidates would leave thousands of troops in the country after pulling out combat forces. The 30-second spot, which is a version of a longer web video, will hit the airwaves in some New Hampshire markets tomorrow. Read more …

Mitt Romney has upped the ante in the arms race among the Republican presidential candidates to see who can be toughest on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his visit to New York City, launching a radio ad in early primary states that repeats a call he made last week for the world body to indict the Iranian leader under the Genocide Convention.

The 60-second spot, which begins airing today in Iowa and South Carolina and then in Florida later in the week, trumpets how Mr. Romney, as governor of Massachusetts, refused to provide a State Police escort to former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami when he came to Harvard University to speak in 2006, arguing he was responsible for the torture and murder of dissidents. But Middle East scholars and human rights organizations at the time took issue with Mr. Romney’s characterizations of Mr. Khatami, a reformist leader who instituted democratic reforms and opposes of Mr. Ahmadinejad. Read more …

Mitt Romney is making a major messaging blitz this weekend, launching what his campaign advisers say will be one of his dominant campaign themes in the coming months, casting him as a change agent for the Republican Party and Washington.

The blitz essentially began earlier in the week with the release of a new television ad, entitled “Change Begins with Us,” in New Hampshire and Iowa that featured Mr. Romney speaking directly into the camera and calling for Republicans to “put our own house in order.” He criticizes the party for overspending, failing to secure the border and corruption, declaring “It’s time for Republicans to start acting like Republicans.”

The push will continue on Saturday, when the same ad begins running in South Carolina and Mr. Romney will deliver a speech echoing the themes from the ad at a Republican Party gathering in Mackinac Island, Michigan. On Sunday, Mr. Romney will run his “Change” ad on national network television during Meet the Press.

He has also purchased a full-page newspaper ad in both the Manchester Union Leader on Sunday and Roll Call on Monday with what the campaign calls an “open letter” to fellow Republicans asking them to join his movement to change Washington. Read more …

It is getting hard to keep up with Mitt Romney’s new ads. Alex Castellanos and company on his ad team are staying busy, while the other major Republican contenders mostly continue to bide their time.

Mr. Romney’s new spot, up in the usual places, first in New Hampshire and then in Iowa later in the week, continues his pattern of subtly setting himself apart from President Bush and portraying himself as a Washington outsider who will bring change.

He targets his party for overspending, failures on immigration and ethical lapses. Here is the script for the 30-second spot, “Change Begins with Us”:

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In the escalating arms race between Rudolph W. Giuliani and MoveOn.org, both sides ratcheted up a notch today:

Mr. Giuliani put out a 30-second radio spot statewide in Iowa attacking MoveOn.org. And MoveOn doubled its recent ad buy to expand its anti-Giuliani ad from Iowa television to national cable television.

In his radio spot, Mr. Giuliani did not address the specifics of MoveOn’s latest spot, which criticizes him for quitting the Iraq Study Group after not attending any of its meetings. Instead, he derides MoveOn as “the most powerful left-wing group in the country” and says it has given millions to “anti-war liberals.”
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