This is Rick Perry’s latest TV ad, uploaded to his Presidential campaign’s YouTube channel, in which he promises to end President Obama’s war on religion. No, I don’t know what he’s talking about either, but that’s not important. Look at the video’s statistics, just below the video to the right. Over 300,000 people have clicked the Dislike button, which is about 50 times as many as those that have clicked the Like button. How bad is it? We’re talking Justin Bieber levels of animosity. I’m sure publicity like this has created a bit of a liberal pile-on, but still. Nobody seems to have rallied the troops in favor of him to counter that. It’s mighty impressive.
What’s even more interesting about this is that if you click the associated videos on that page, they don’t generally enable the Like/Dislike button for contents on the Rick Perry channel. The one other example of having it there I found was this one, which at the time I clicked it had 746 likes and 24,785 dislikes. It doesn’t really matter what he has to say, it’s not what he’s saying that people are reacting to.
Naturally, something like this is bound to draw satiric responses. Trail Blazers has one good one, and Harold has another. Some more conventional responses are here. There was a time when a lot of people might have thought that Perry was playing a crafty game of rope-a-dope, drawing attention to himself and goodwill from the Republican primary voters as the people they all demonize react predictably to this. Now I think everyone just sees it as a pathetic display of weenie-wagging. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, that’s for sure.
I’d already seen the ad, and am one of the “dislikes.” It WAS what he said.
I know full well that I am likely to at least disagree with whatever he puts up as an ad, particularly with his current position in the polls. But this diatribe was more along the lines of what you might hear from a caller on talk radio, or maybe one of Fox’s crazier contributors – NOT an (allegely) serious candidate for high office.
He’s jumped the shark.
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