Rapid Response!

Barely hours old, Donald Trump's endorsement of Mitt Romney provokes a response from the DNC video attack ad.

Go ahead and watch: it's a clever video and you can view it with the sound off (other than the three quotes at the end there is only a jaunty tune).

The Ad
As Romney falls and Trump (and The Hair) rises, the text overlay asks why Trump would endorse Mitt!? He was 47th out of 50 in job creation. He 'bled jobs at 2x the national average.' And Trump has said he didn't have a chance.

But it turns out there's something they have in common: They both like firing people!


Ha! Then we get two of Trump's iconic "You're fired" statements and Romney up there going "I like to be able to fire people who provide services to me."

It's short, sweet, there is no technical wizardry in it and it probably took about an hour and a half to put together once they decided how they were going to open it.

What Does It Mean?
Mainly it means that the DNC has a pretty good rapid-response team behind it. This is not (likely) to get airplay outside of YouTube--but at only 43 seconds and designed with a "light" touch it could get some viral play. IT's also clever--combining Romney's gaffe with Trump's tag-line isn't rocket science but it also means Team Democrat isn't flatfooted either. They knew this story would have a short half-life (does anyone care who Trump endorses? Doubt it) and had to get their video out while "the iron was hot."

And they did. And there's nothing wrong with it. It does take his quote out of context but it doesn't take itself too seriously. It pokes fun at Romney without being a grim, heavy handed attack ad. I'm sure Romney-supporters won't take it well--but even so, I think it'll be hard to get too upset about this.

So it's good--and it makes it's point.

What Do I Think?
Romney is building a library of gaffes and the DNC and Team Obama are certainly working hard on ways to exploit them. I think they know that people will not take most politician's statements any too literally so sniping like this is (until the dead heat of the general) the best way to keep these memes relevant and maybe even re-freshen them before the general election begins.

What impresses me about it isn't the "deadly aim" the ad takes--or the simple use of the statement--but rather the perfect timing and the ease of execution. If I were Team Romney I'd be concerned about this sort of stuff coming hard and heavy in the next few months: eventually one of these is going to go really viral (remember Paris Hilton's campaign ad making fun of McCain?) and that won't be good.