Saturday, February 04, 2006

Breaking the Law -- The Latest Morph

In a flashback to the 1994 elections -- Moveon.org has launched a "morphing ad."




You may remember the series of ads Republican Congressional candidates ran in the '94 elections -- where Democratic incumbents morphed into President Bill Clinton.

They took advantage of Mr Clinton's low poll numbers to link incumbents to his most unpopular policies.

The MoveOn.org ad -- called Breaking the Law -- attacks President Bush over the domestic spying scandal and compare it to Nixon-era abuses.

A Brief History of Morphing Ads

In 2000, Americans for Tax Reform -- headed by GOP activist Grover Norquist -- ran ads in the New Hampshire Primary showing Sen John McCain's face morphing into Bill Clinton's.

During the 2004 Presidential campaign, MoveOn.org pulled an Internet ad from a contest it ran because it featured President Bush transitioning into Hitler.

The Republican National Committee also came under fire for an ad that featured Sen Max Cleland (D-GA) -- a triple amputee Vietnam vet -- purportedly morphing into Osama bin Laden (below).




The ad did not actually feature any morphing -- but started with terrorist images and then launched into an attack on the Senator. Despite any overt comparison -- the ad was controversial enough to force the RNC to rework it and re-release it without the terrorist images.

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