Americans For Prosperity Comes to Pennsylvania
Americans for Prosperity seeks to capitalize on the president’s recent gaffe about the state of the economy. The “Doing Fine” ad is a $400,000 media buy that will run for ten days in Colorado, Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Tim Phillips, the President of AFP, stated that the new set of ad buys seeks to highlight Obama’s dismal economic record and disseminate the organization’s alternative jobs agenda.
If you’ve seen the ad, it highlights three critical points about the Obama Agenda:
1. 12.7 million people are still out of work
2. Forty months of unemployment above 8%
3. The national debt has exploded to $15 trillion dollars
While Mr. Phillips acknowledged that President Obama amended his previous statement concerning the private sector “doing fine,” he feels that the initial comments genuinely shows how he feels about the economy and that his “correction” was a poorly executed political statement aimed to pivot the media away from his naiveté.
However, with AFP’s previous slamming of the administrations clean energy policy, it was a little puzzling to see that Pennsylvania was not added to the list of priority states that the organization intends to spend a significant amount of resources on concerning media outreach, neighborhood canvassing, and phone banks. At least, during the initial execution of AFP’s media campaign. Given the Marcellus Shale and the high-pay jobs associated with fracking, it was reassuring to hear that the “doing fine” ad will be shown in Pennsylvania, which will be the epicenter of the 2012 election. It has the most electoral votes in the Northeast and Democrats cannot retake the House without making significant inroads within Pennsylvania’s congressional districts. What motivated AFP to initiate a statewide ad buy were the numbers concerning the Commonwealth’s crumbling manufacturing base and Obama’s energy policy that is just killing the local economy.
In all, AFP plans to spend some serious money in areas they feel will have the most impact this election year. So far, they’ve spent $20 million dollars on ad buys attacking Obama’s record and Mr. Phillips stated that they could spend close to $100 million dollars by the end of this election cycle. AFP spent $51 million dollars in 2011 and $40 million during the 2010 midterm elections. All of which ended with positive electoral results for the conservative movement and effectively took away Obama’s credit card in the process. Team Obama should be worried about the aggressive nature AFP is taking towards the administration because their ground operations have slain liberal Democrats and other politicians who peddle policies detrimental to limited government and economic freedom.
