https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6muDRoTrNk
As we said over three years ago in Messaging Maxim #3, There’s an Invention Called Video, some Republicans (older white male Republicans in particular) seem to have trouble grasping the fact that statements they make on video are forever, and can come back to haunt them. This week, Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor may have been hurt by the video maxim in a different way: being overly cautious about what he put on video.
In the MSNBC piece featured above, Rachel Maddow says that:
Political ads are forever. They are forever even when the candidates themselves wish they would go away. They are an indelible record of what politicians say and promise and allege and screw up.
According to Maddow, video ads are part of the reason why Eric Cantor lost his primary election last Tuesday night, in one of the biggest political upsets in American history. Maddow said that, while Cantor’s Republican challenger, David Brat, repeatedly hammered Cantor over Cantor’s supposed support of immigration reform, Cantor’s video ads were overly cautious because Cantor was smart enough to know that those ads would be up forever:
He [Cantor] got very risk-averse when it came to putting things on video. The ads that Eric Cantor ran in this race were the most milquetoast thing you’ve ever seen in your life… they were the political equivalent of ‘have a nice day.’
Maddow noted however, that Cantor’s direct mail flyers, which are not as indelible as video ads, were much more risky and hard-hitting, and directly addressed the immigration issue that Cantor’s video ads did not. Cantor’s flyers, said Maddow, were anti-immigration, and even stated unequivocally that “Eric Cantor is the No. 1 guy standing between the American people and immigration reform.” According to Maddow:
He [Cantor] didn’t put it up on a video where it might end up on the Intertubes, then on TV where, I don’t know, Latinos or somebody might see it if they were noodling around wondering about the views of the Republican Party leadership on immigration reform. No, what you might find online is, ‘ah, he seems like a nice man.’
In Cantor’s case, not taking a risk with his video ads may have avoided further hurt to the Republican Party on immigration, where Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has said that not working on immigration reform is leading to a “demographic death spiral” for the GOP. In this case, however, being overly cautious on video may have hurt Cantor’s re-election bid.
We’ll save for another post how Republican Senator John McCain has once again fallen into the video trap on Iraq.
