Their Brand In Crisis

1:32 am EST June 25th, 2008 | Republicans | 14 Comments

How bad is the Republican brand, and by extension, John McCain’s brand? Oregon’s Gordon Smith, in one of the most endangered Senate seats, has a new ad touting a purported connection to a presidential candidate…

… Barack Obama.

Sen Obama issued a statement making clear where he stands:

“Barack Obama has a long record of bipartisan accomplishment and we appreciate that it is respected by his Democratic and Republican colleagues in the Senate. But in this race, Oregonians should know that Barack Obama supports Jeff Merkley for Senate. Merkley will help Obama bring about the fundamental change we need in Washington,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

Has this ever happened before? An incumbent senator touting a connection to the opposing party’s presidential candidate?

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14 Responses to “Their Brand In Crisis”

  1. evie says:
    June 25, 2008 at 3:29 am

    I keep seeing bloggers say this was a first, but I distinctly remember Daschle running an ad in 2002 showing him hugging Bush. The internets were in an uproar, and he still lost.

  2. evie says:
    June 25, 2008 at 3:30 am

    Sorry, that would have been 2004.

  3. Randy Brown says:
    June 25, 2008 at 5:26 am

    Um…Jiltin’ Joe Lieberman?

  4. christie says:
    June 25, 2008 at 7:36 am

    “Barack Obama has a long record of bipartisan accomplishment”

    I’d like to see this backed up by facts. Or is Obama a liar?

  5. Scratch says:
    June 25, 2008 at 8:08 am

    I predict that in the 2015 VH1 series, “It Came From The Oughts,” the word “brand” as it applies to politics will be ridiculed by Mo Roca and others.

  6. Athenae says:
    June 25, 2008 at 8:42 am

    PWNED.

    A.

  7. Devon says:
    June 25, 2008 at 8:44 am

    @christie

    Just vote for McCain like you plan to do and stop being a troll.

  8. Duros62 says:
    June 25, 2008 at 8:49 am

    I’d like to see this backed up by facts. Or is Obama a liar?
    STFU.

    http://www.barackobama.com

  9. Ted Kilvington says:
    June 25, 2008 at 9:13 am

    I know Al D’Amato in 1992 endorsed Bill Clinton over George Bush Sr. and was re-elected. In the next six years D’Amato became a vicious anti-Clinton attack dog and lost his re-election bid to Chuck Schumer in 1998.

    I’m sure various red state Democrats and blue state Republicans have endorsed presidential candidates of the opposing party over the year. I remember reading in Nixon’s memoirs that in August 1974 after it came out that he had been flat out lying to both his Republican colleagues and the American people about his involvement in the Watergate scandal, Nixon believed that the only lawmakers he could count own anymore were the Southern Democrats, not the GOP, so he resigned.

  10. christie says:
    June 25, 2008 at 1:32 pm

    “Just vote for McCain like you plan to do and stop being a troll.”

    Yeah… don’t confuse me with facts!

  11. Sean D. Martin says:
    June 25, 2008 at 3:51 pm

    christie: Yeah… don’t confuse me with facts!

    Well, if you wouldn’t insist on finding real facts to be so confusing, it would help.

    In the meantime, since you seem to have no interest of even spending the few seconds it would take to, oh, Google “Obama bipartisan” and find things like this or like this I’ll provide those links for you.

    Also? In the meantime? STFU.

  12. Sean D. Martin says:
    June 26, 2008 at 11:17 am

    christie? Hello? christie?

    Yeah, I thought so.

  13. Parthenon says:
    June 26, 2008 at 6:32 pm

    I live in Oregon, and I have to say this doesn’t surprise me a bit. One can throw a rock here and hit an Obama sign, and it’s honestly hard some mornings to get behind a car on the freeway that doesn’t have an Obama sticker.

  14. Parthenon says:
    June 26, 2008 at 6:34 pm

    Meant to italicize ‘doesn’t’ for sentence emphasis, and put the tags around the wrong word… kind of embarrassing… that’s what happens when you try to comment on your way out the door to work.