GOP again buys Burns TV ads

[Judi Lynn]

GOP again buys Burns TV ads
By CHARLES S. JOHNSON
Gazette State Bureau

(Published on Tuesday, October 31, 2006.
Last modified on 10/31/2006 at 12:59 am)

HELENA - The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which hadn't been on the television airwaves in Montana for 12 weeks, is buying $310,000 worth of ads to help Sen. Conrad Burns in the final week of his tough re-election battle.

Nationally syndicated columnist Robert Novak reported Sunday that the national GOP strategists "had virtually written off" Burns in his race against Democratic challenger Jon Tester. However, Novak wrote, these national GOP operatives "have been sufficiently persuaded by his late rally to send his cash-starved campaign some extra funds.
(snip)

The Novak column said Burns made a personal appeal to the White House for the late TV buy because of his improved showing in polls.
(snip)

Countered Tester spokesman Matt McKenna: "Senator Burns is calling in every possible favor from his friends in Washington, D.C., now that he's realized that the people of Montana no longer trust him."
(snip/...)

http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2006/10/31/news/state/40-ads.txt

[Rose Siding]

1. It's a feint. Josh Marshall described its variation well here-

All sorts of articles have been written over the last week or so with one question: Why is Karl Rove so confident? What does he know that the Dems and the pundit-predictors don't?

The answer is really, really simple: nothing. There's not anything he knows. In fact, he's not even confident. It's a bluff.

There are ten different reasons to know this. But the most compelling and sufficient one is to look at his history. In fact, go back to the second post I ever did on TPM just a couple weeks shy of six years ago. It was about a stunt Rove pulled that almost lost Bush the presidency in 2000.

Going into the big day the polls all showed a very, very close race, with perhaps ever so slight an edge for Bush. Conventional logic would have dictated sending Bush to swing states like Florida. But that's not what Rove did. He chose instead to send Bush to California and New Jersey -- states Bush could only have any hope of winning in a blow-out. The reasoning was simple. Rove figured that he could accomplish more through convincing mainly the press, but also activists and even highly-plugged voters, that Bush was going to win big than he would by sending his guy into a state like Florida for some last minute retail politicking.

It's the bandwagon effect. Psyche out the other side. Act like you're winning and you'll charge up your activists/voters and demoralize the folks on the other side. Mainly, get the press to believe your hype and they'll do the charging up and demoralizing for you. As it happened, it was a really dumb decision in 2000. If not for faulty ballots and election stealing, Bush would have lost Florida and the presidency. And given the margin, it's at least conceivable that Bush could have won fair and square had he spent the last few days on the ground in Florida.

Now, the situation right now is obviously very different than what Rove faced in 2000. They're on the defense. But all the same logics and principles apply. For the Republicans, the difference between a bad night on election night and a catastrophe could well turn on whether or not the party's ground troops really believe all the polls they're seeing. If they do, the demoralization will likely be crippling. And a bunch of them won't even show up. Rove has to create the impression that he knows something the polls don't to keep the Republican GOTV operation from breaking down entirely.

It's that simple.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/010664.php

[Zynx]

2. Airtime in Montana is dirt cheap. That's why.

This is a helluva lot smarter than wasting $5 million in a few days in the NYC media market.

[confludemocrat]

3. We're getting wall to wall Burns push polls here in eastern MT

two different companies have called, not seen before. His usually rock solid base is sparsely populated eastern MT, where even Billings TV is not picked up off the air, so this may not help them that much.