(NN&V Staff) – Citizens for the Republic – a 501(C)(4) conservative grassroots lobbying organization reborn under the leadership of Reagan stalwarts – last week entered the U.S. Senate race in Nevada with the launch of a Nevada advertising campaign featuring its 60-second TV spot, “Mourning in America.”
The ad – a twist on the 1984 Reagan campaign’s fabled “Better, Prouder, Stronger” ad, the best-known of the “Morning in America” series – captures the nation’s mood today as well as the original ad captured the mood of the nation’s electorate a quarter-century ago. In forlorn Nevada – with its highest-in-the-nation foreclosure rate, highest-in-the-nation bankruptcy rate, and highest-in-the-nation unemployment – the ad strikes a particularly resonant chord.
“Unlike the Reagan ad about a bright future under his leadership, our new ad is about failed leadership, about a government growing out of control, about a government taking away our ability to make important choices,” CFTR Executive Vice President Bill Pascoe said. “It’s about an America that’s suffering because of the failed policies and failed leadership of President Obama and his liberal allies like Harry Reid – and reminding Americans that they can change that with their vote on November 2.”
The ad reads in part:
“There’s mourning in America. Today, 15 million men and women won’t have the opportunity to go to work. Businesses shuttered …
“Our government is now taking over the choices we once made in life. There’s mourning in America.
“Under the leadership of President Obama, our country is fading, and weaker, and worse off. His policies were a grand experiment – policies that failed.
“This November let’s choose a smaller, more caring government … one that remembers us.”
“When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, America was depressed,” Pascoe continued. “Inflation and interest rates were sky high, the economy was lagging, and around the world it seemed as if we had a ‘kick me’ sign on our back. But under Ronald Reagan’s leadership – and with the kind of pro-freedom, pro-growth policies he enacted with bipartisan support – America turned the corner, and came back strong. The ‘Better, Prouder, Stronger’ ad succeeded in the 1984 campaign, and became one of the greatest political ads of all time, because it so brilliantly captured the zeitgeist of the age.
“Today, Nevada is reeling from the misguided policies pushed by Senator Harry Reid,” Pascoe continued. “Highest in the nation foreclosures. Highest in the nation unemployment. Highest in the nation bankruptcies. That’s the price Nevadans have paid for the failed leadership of Harry Reid. It’s our hope – and our belief – that Nevadans will see our ad and think anew about the consequences of Harry Reid’s failures.”
The ad will run for one week in both the Las Vegas and Reno markets.
Citizens for the Republic includes on its Board of Directors Chairman Craig Shirley, Edwin Meese, Peter Hannaford, Mari Maseng Will, and Daniel Oliver. You can see the new “Mourning in America” spot here: www.cftr.org.
