Who Was Helped by The Daily Caller's Obama Video Stunt?
The moment Twitter figured out that Drudge, Sean Hannity, and The Daily Caller had coordinated to make a big production out of an Obama speech that was covered by a ton of news sites five years ago spawned anxiety among some conservatives. Starting Tuesday afternoon, The Drudge Report cleverly teased the unveiling of an all-new video of President Obama saying all-new racially-charged things, slowly releasing more and more details -- "THE ACCENT... THE ANGER... THE ACCUSATIONS..." -- until he made the mistake of posting a still image from the video. At that point, BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski pointed out that video had been on the Internet forever.
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BuzzFeed's Zeke Miller spoke to several of these conservative strategists who are left wondering WTF their allies are doing:
"This hurts Mitt," said 2008 Romney consultant Alex Castellanos, who has at times been a harsh critic of his current campaign. "Mitt's window to turn the economic debate around is tomorrow. And his alleged supporters just shit on it. An abysmally selfish and stupid event."
Former John McCain and Jon Huntsman campaign manager John Weaver told Miller, "Is the base Romney's problem?... We're running against a guy with more than eight percent unemployed, etc. and instead of offering a counter plan for consumers to chose between, some are focused on the President being Black and liberal."
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And it wasn't just Republican consultants who were displeased. Politico's Dylan Byers reports a few reliably fiery talking heads weren't happy either:
"What’s the ‘So what’ of this video? I don’t think it’s going to really go anywhere,” Republican Rep. Allen West said on Fox News.
“I don’t think this particular speech is definitive," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, though he added that it was at least a "reminder" of Obama's "pattern of dishonesty."
But this analysis ignores the fact that anything about Obama and race gets mad crazy traffic, as The Atlantic Wire itself has discovered. "We will continue to investigate the president at @dailycaller . We will not falter. We will not fail. Truth must come out about this admin," The Daily Caller's Matthew Boyle tweeted. Of course you will! Your traffic depends on it.
