You’re in a hole, Pete. Stop digging.
The fallout from Senatorial candidate and racist Pete Hoekstra and his offensive, xenophobic political ad continued unabated today.
Another GOP consultant, Mike Murphy, tweeted that the ad was “really, really dumb”. According the Washington Post, “Foreign Policy magazine managing editor Blake Hounshell called the ad ‘despicable.'”
Ironically, the ad, which seems to blame U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow for the outsourcing that is sending jobs over seas, was not produced in Michigan. Rather, it was made by media strategist Fred Davis of California-based Strategic Perception Inc.. In other words, he outsourced it to another state.
Joan McCarter at Daily Kos reports that Hoekstra spent $150,000 on this monstrosity that, as she put it, “Offend[s] most of the state of Michigan”.
MaddowBlog linked my piece in a post titled “Pete Hoekstra’s viral bait”.
Featuring a young Asian woman who thanks Stabenow for borrowing so much money from Asia and sending jobs overseas, Hoekstra’s ad jams an incredible number of stereotypes into just 30 seconds — from the bicycle to the rice paddies to the accent.The ad is classic viral bait, in which the repellant doubles as the attraction. Hoekstra’s ad sends viewers to the DebbieSpendItNow.com, screengrabbed above. The site credits the Prosper Group, whose client list includes Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, the Wisconsin GOP and Scott Brown. You want the vanilla site? OK. You want the crazy? Just send the check. Hoekstra’s spot is gross, certainly, but it’s also sadly usual.
In a particularly lame fundraising scheme, Hoekstra contributors were able to view the ad in advance – if they made a contribution. MIRS news service reported this morning that Dennis Darnoi, a Republican consultant and owner of Densar Consulting, said he likes Hoekstra and supports his campaign, but he criticized the strategy of charging people to see an ad as something out of a late-night infomercial.
“It sure would be interesting to find out how many people took advantage of this great offer,” Darnoi said. “He at least could have sweetened the deal by throwing in a pair of steak knives or olive de-pitter for the first 50 respondents.”
An Associated Press article was titled “Hoekstra Super Bowl ad raises sensitivity question”. Actually, what it raised was a RACISM question.
Steve Frye, the online editor of the Oakland Press tweeted “Sen. Debbie Stabenow, let me be among the first to congratulate you on your reelection.”
Hoekstra himself doubled down on his racist ad:
Speaking on a conference call Monday morning with reporters, the Michigan Republican Senate candidate pushed back at widening criticism that the ad is insensitive or mean-spirited.“We knew we were taking an aggressive approach on this, but this is a time when the people of Michigan and across the country are fed up with the spending,” he said. “It hits Debbie smack dab between the eyes where she is vulnerable with the voters of Michigan. I’m excited…it has jump started the debate.”
Keep digging, Pete. As my buddy Christine Barry at Blogging for Michigan put it: “Everytime I think the Republican Party has hit the rock bottom of decency, they pull out their shovels and dig a little more. This time they have dug deep enough to hit China.”
Adding… I just wanted to point out that very basis for Hoekstra’s ridiculous ad is quite flawed. China actually holds only about 7.6% of our national debt. 61% is publicly-held.
UPDATE: If you aren’t already, have a look over at www.petehoekstra.com. That site is doing a great job of documenting the aftermath of Hoekstra’s very public fail. For example, they have some great documentation of the keepers of Hoekstra’s Facebook page desperately trying to keep up with the deletion of negative comments that are pouring into the site.
[Title update thanks to my friend LOLGOP.]
