ShareThisBy BILL TOLAND
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
The 2006 election is over, and the 2008 election is 718 days away. So why is a pro-choice Republican group launching a controversial advertising campaign in Pennsylvania TV markets this week?
A week that was supposed to be the first in six months fully devoid of political ads?
"Our ad, which is, you know, purposely divisive, could have hurt Republicans in certain races," said Jennifer Stockman, national co-chair of the Republican Majority for Choice, itself an outgrowth of the former national Republican Pro-Choice Coalition.
The political action group, which focuses on abortion rights and other privacy issues, decided to wait until after the election to air the ads, with the hopes of getting an early jump on the 2008 presidential race.
The ad campaign begins in Pennsylvania, but the group hopes to be on the air in Iowa or New Hampshire _ the states with the earliest primaries _ within the next six months.
The ad, which began airing Sunday only in Pennsylvania, asks viewers, "What is the Republican Party today? Is it the party of Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan?"
Or is it a vocal minority of extremists? the advertisement asks, flashing images of evangelists Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Ted Haggard, as well as the ousted Sen. Rick Santorum.
The answer, the group hopes, is the party of Lincoln. The Pennsylvania ad slots, which cost nearly $500,000, were purchased before the Nov. 7 election, meaning the GOP group was taking a calculated gamble that the results would be a rebuke to the socially conservative wing of the party, and a victory for Democrats and social moderates.
The controversy comes with the original version of the ad, which included Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter and former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge on its roster of heroic moderates.
Those images drew complaints from both Specter and Ridge, neither of whom wanted to be included in the attack on the recently fallen junior senator.
Stockman said her group had edited the ads, subtracting Specter and Ridge, but in some markets the original ad still ran because the new versions were delivered too late. By now, the only version of the advertisement being aired is the updated one.
The ad campaign is part of an ongoing attempt to tweak the group's image, making it into a "big tent" organization that can look beyond the abortion issue, wrapping its arms around immigration, national security and excess government spending. Yet just two years ago, the group changed to its current name to reflect the fact that "73 percent of Republicans believe that the right to choose should be a woman's decision, not the government's," the group said at the time.
Bill Toland can be reached a btoland(at)post-gazette.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com
