The first televised advertisement for the Mitt Romney presidential campaign was released today, entitled “Day One.”
It’s very short and pointed, delivering three specific commitments in the span of thirty seconds: President Romney would immediately approve the Keystone pipeline, introduce “tax cuts and reforms that reward job creators, not punish them,” and begin replacing whatever remains of ObamaCare with “commonsense health care reform.”
Romney would be able to get things rolling on the Keystone project, just as Barack Obama has personally and energetically blocked it. He’ll have to get in line behind the Supreme Court for his crack at ObamaCare, but a great deal can be done to clear away the debris of that horrific legislative disaster with executive orders.
The new President can “introduce” tax cuts and reforms, and would deserve credit for doing so – just as President Obama deserves the strongest possible condemnation for submitting absurd budgets that not even Democrats are willing to vote for – but of course the fate of Romney’s proposals would lie with Congress, a point his campaign might consider making in future ads. If you like the Romney agenda, you’ll want to send plenty of Republicans to Congress with him. Very few good ideas manage to get past Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
The “Day One” video was given a wide release early this morning via email and social networks, and will also appear on television in several key markets. The widespread online effort, which the Romney campaign believes will quickly deliver their video to better than eight million viewers, is an interesting contrast with the relatively modest million-dollar TV ad buy - they clearly view the online battleground as an important component of their campaign strategy. Considerable effort is being made to distribute a Spanish-language version of the ad as well.
“We thought it was very important to begin the dialogue by giving the voters a sense of what a Romney presidency would look like,” campaign advisor Russ Schriefer said in a conference call this morning. “We wanted to make it clear that from Day One, a Romney presidency would be very different from what Barack Obama has done.”
Schriefer went on to point out that all three of the commitments made in the video have long appeared as “day one” items on Romney’s agenda. In fact, his campaign website lists five specific bills he would introduce on Day One, along with five executive orders. In addition to the items mentioned in the “Day One” video, these measures would reform domestic energy policy, trade policy, and federal retraining programs, cut $20 billion from the federal budget, and reduce corporate income tax rates to 25 percent. (America currently has the highest corporate tax rate on Earth, at 35 percent.)
Conspicuously absent from the Romney campaign are tired excuses, class warfare, relentless attempts to demonize targeted sectors of American industry, demands for the private sector to surrender more liberty, and attempts to blame someone who left office four years ago for everything wrong with American government.
