Here’s Rick Snyder’s ad appealing to the ever-fickle under-25 bridezilla demographic. Do you think Bob Shrum has switched sides?
(via Dan Savage — click on that link to see a group of links explaining how Republicans are still at war on women. I’m still having trouble with the yuck factor of a 56 year-old man putting out a video where a 21 year-old is picking out the dress to marry him.)
Update: As dmsilev pointed out in the comments, there are a whole series of these ads. You can find them on the College Republican YouTube channel, where a bride is saying “yes” to Bruce Rauner, Tom Corbett, Asa Hutchinson, Bob Beauprez and Rick Scott, in addition to Snyder. It’s hard to decide which is the creepiest, but I’m going to go with Corbett.
Omnes Omnibus
So wrong on so many levels.
JPL
I don’t get it. Is Snyder paying for the champagne with taxpayer money?
debbie
A really bad analogy. The Republicans are a party of selfish child-brides not getting what they want?
jl
I thought this was a joke. Needs more Alan Simpson, then it might work.
MomSense
Ew.
dmsilev
There was a whole series of those ads, identical except for swapping out the names of the candidates. My favorite was the Florida version, where the Perky Bride(tm) said “The Rick Scott is perfect”.
The phrase ‘Rick Scott is perfect’ only makes sense when followed by ‘ly evil’.
Matt
It’s really a stretch for the GOP base – a 21-year-old is practically a spinster. A more accurate ad would have a 15-year-old picking out a wedding dress between classes at middle school. Still marrying a 56-year-old, tho… :(
JGabriel
Oh man, great song, I haven’t heard it in so long. Thanks for the reminder – going off to listen to it now.
jl
@dmsilev: I was SURE that was a joke.
dmsilev
@jl: It was, just not intentionally…
gnomedad
I expected to be asked to vote for Ron Popeil. And if you act now …
p.a.
Obviously a left wing dirty trick like ‘get a life morans’ was. What I don’t get is how lieberals got Katrina to swerve from the Yucatan to Nawlins. They are very good at making RealMurcans look stoopid.
brendancalling
As a PA resident, I heartily agree that the Corbett ad is the worst, especially when you consider the porn scandal.
Bill E Pilgrim
@p.a.:
Get a brain, morans.
The spelling would have been great by itself, but it was the brain part that really made it sing.
MattF
Ah, sheet. Wimmens is just so complexcated.
Vtr
Somebody please make sure Colbert knows about this – wait, did he produce these spots?
Amir Khalid
@JGabriel:
I only wish Liz Phair was as good at singing her songs as she was at writing them.
Baud
This might be an appropriate time for an “All of them, Katie.”
Princess
It’s “her decision” but someone else is going to pay for it. Sounds like the values of the Republican party to me.
max
Do you think Bob Shrum has switched sides?
Bob Shrum has a side named something other than Bob Shrum?
max
[‘Of course, there’s always the possibility he’s a mole.’]
Amir Khalid
Okay, whom is this campaign ad supposed to convince? Because I can’t see a woman, whatever her age, accepting the premise that voting a politician into office is like picking a wedding dress.
PaulW
I hate to point it out, but… isn’t bigamy/polygamy illegal even for the Republican Party? SHE’S MARRYING SIX GUYS SO FAR…
O.o
On a tangent, how CHEAP is the College Republicans for recycling the same goddamn ad over and over?
Amir Khalid
@PaulW:
Ahem. How do conservative Mormons vote, generally speaking?
PaulW
@Amir Khalid:
Okay, whom is this campaign ad supposed to convince? Because I can’t see a woman, whatever her age, accepting the premise that voting a politician into office is like picking a wedding dress.
The premise is wrong on various points:
1) it assumes that young women are fickle.
2) it assumes that young women are impressed with pretty pretty things.
3) it assumes that the Republican Party’s real problem with women voters is “branding” (aka the Scott Brand, the Snyder Brand et al) rather than the fact the GOP’s platform is anti-fair pay, anti-birth control, anti-health care, anti-food for families and kids, basically anti-women.
4) it assumes that regular voters overall are still worried about “DREADED SOCIALISM” like higher taxes and more government regulation when most voters are worried about paying off their mortgages, getting better pay, and fixing our roads and schools.
5) it assumes voters can’t get on YouTube and find out that same ad is recycled for six (maybe even more) candidates, meaning it’s a cookie-cutter bland generic ad that’s not really speaking to them or their district.
aimai
Also what the girl says is that X is a “trusted name”–i.e. that she is picking based on other people’s opinion of a brand, not because she is making an informed choice. That’s a weird way to attempt to appeal to a theoretical young voter: “choose what everyone else is choosing so long as everyone else is not your mother.” Its an attempt to appeal to young voters as individualists and iconoclasts (anti older generation) but its also an appeal to mindless and uninformed conformity.
Roger Moore
@PaulW:
What’s worse is that it’s one woman talking about marrying 6 different men. Doesn’t that make her a slutty slut slut? Also, BTW, voter fraud. I guess IOKIYAVFAR.
PaulW
@Amir Khalid:
Technically, bigamy’s still illegal in Utah.
The whole conservative argument against Gay Marriage is that it will be a slippery slope to polygamy and “man and dog” marriages. So there’s the hypocrisy with that ad having that girl marry so many MARRIED GUYS at once.
jayboat
Life in the bubble…
aimai
@dmsilev: You have to wonder what happens to viewers in those overlapping markets–where people see political ads for races which are not their own. Do some viewers see the same woman dreamily vowing to choose a different politician every hour on the hour?
Amir Khalid
@PaulW:
I’m aware both that polygamy is illegal in Utah, and that a few ultraconservative Mormons there practice it anyway.
Suffern ACE
Sigh. She should get a pre-nup, since Rick Snyder seems the type of guy who won’t be returning the dowry.
danielx
Totally skeevy……ewwwww.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
I await the Texas version where the woman says, “I’m going with Wendy Davis, and I’m getting married in pink sneakers!”
dmsilev
@aimai: Are they actually running these ads on TV? I thought these were basically just pushed out to YouTube along with a press release rather than being an actual set of ad campaigns with actual money behind them.
PaulW
What the hell happened to going barefoot to show off that cute “Austin Rules” ankle tattoo?!
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
My guess is that these ads are directed more at young white women’s middle aged, middle class, suburban, church-going white mothers.
dmsilev
@Baud: Except that the middle-aged, middle-class mom is the villain of the piece.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
But in these ads, the mother of the bride is the one who’s dead set on the “wrong” candidate.
Mike in NC
The latest insipid ad by the RNSC running in North Carolina features several women complaining about how Senator Kay Hagan “is a nice person, but she just isn’t getting the job done”. Whatever that means.
Maybe because she isn’t a man? Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Mike in NC
@Amir Khalid: If you want to read up on so-called Mormon Fundamentalsts living in the American southwest, check out a book called “Under the Banner of Heaven”.
Iowa Old Lady
Having a stronger stomach than I do, Mr IOL watches the Sunday shows. He just reported that Chuck Todd isn’t up to keeping control of a discussion. Panelists are apparently screaming at one another over how likely we all are to dies of Ebola. Joe Scarborough is stoking fear and distrust of the info the government it providing.
Lovely.
Crusty Dem
Click through to the college republican YouTube channel – they really love the reality show theme – the bachelorette Michigan ad is completely atrocious and offensively stupid..
geg6
Corbett is always the creepiest. Except maybe Florida’s Voldemort. But the porn factor with Corbett is just cringe inducing.
They really know nothing whatsoever about young women. Nothing.
Howard Beale IV
OK, reality-check time. Of the married women BJ populace, how many of you (1) still have your wedding dress vs. (2) rented it?
Bob Munck
One has to wonder if they gave any thought to using this ad for any of their female candidates. That would give it a whole new meaning, actually widen the demographic it appeals to.
Amir Khalid
@Bob Munck:
Ooh, you’re a wicked one.
Howard Beale IV
@dmsilev: Same ad, but with different endings. Seems like the GOP has some money problems that they can’t target specific ads but have to do cut-n-paste ads.
opiejeanne
@Mike in NC: Oh God, that’s a horrifying book.
dmbeaster
@Amir Khalid: polygamy itself is not illegal since the extra”wives” are not legally married to the patriarch. Thesr guys usually get in trouble when the sdditional “wives” are, say, 15 years old, or they commit fraud on welfare or other types of benefit programs by claiming marital status for the additional wives.
opiejeanne
@Howard Beale IV: I have mine. My mother had it sealed in a box by the dry cleaner. I wonder if it’s still white after 45 years, though.
It cost $20 because it was last year’s model and a size 3. It had retailed at $200.
MattF
@geg6: It’s really damning. The simplest explanation is that there aren’t any young women around to run the ads by– just to check how a typical female might react. The next possibilities are that any woman would would have reacted negatively has already been fired. After that, you get into ‘dishonest or deluded or deranged’.
JCT
This is not surprising – according to my college-age son, the “Young Republicans” club at his university is filled with guys who can’t get laid to save their lives, worst than even the engineering frats. If this is how they “reach out” to women it all starts to make sense.
Ruckus
Is it amazing(no, that can’t be the proper word, can it?) that they are so wrong on so many issues and willing to say it out loud and proud?
No. It should be, but no.
SATMOSQ
(Simple answer to my own stupid question)
Baud
@dmsilev:
@Amir Khalid:
Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m not sure that matters. Every “good” church-going mother knows a “bad” mother in the community, who the mother in the ad represents.
Ruckus
@JCT:
They do manage to reproduce at some point, we have young college republicans, I’d bet they didn’t just climb out of the primordial ooze.
Howard Beale IV
GOP ads spoofing Say Yes to the Dress criticized as sexist.
gelfling545
@jl: @Howard Beale IV: burned it & buried it at a crossroads.
The Raven on the Hill
It’s hard for me to believe these weren’t focus-group tested.
That’s a scary thought.
Iowa Old Lady
@Howard Beale IV: I think I still have mine somewhere. I made it.
Howard Beale IV
o@The Raven on the Hill: These ads were done by the College Republican National Committee-which kinda tells you all you need to know.
adepsis
@Bill E Pilgrim: I’m most definitely not trying to defend “Moran Guy” here, but I remember the original context for the photo. Wing nuts were in one of their typical echo chamber rages about something WV Rep. Jim Moran said (I think it was about Jews being the main influence behind the US drive to attack Iraq in 2003). For a few weeks they were all making the “Morans” pun for anyone that seemed to agree with his position if a tenuous or imagined connection could be made. I’m happy he’s being ridiculed but it was not a spelling error like the infamous “Obama = Muslin” sign*.
*I personally think he’s more like a nice silk-cotton blend. ;)
kideni
It’s one of the most insulting ads I’ve ever seen, and since I have a feeble lady brain that’s swayed by pretty, shiny things, you know it’s bad. They’re prepared a version of this for Wisconsin too, which is interesting given the fact that one of the things the Walkerbots have decided to go after Mary Burke on is that she supposedly plagiarized material in her jobs plan – her jobs plan incorporates policy ideas from other states, and somehow that’s plagiarism, even though every other politician, including Scott Walker, does the same thing (can you say model legislation from ALEC and other right-wing organizations?).
I was glad to see that a bunch of young women in Florida weren’t convinced by the Rick Scott version.
Mnemosyne
@Howard Beale IV:
I still have mine, but I was too lazy/cheap to have it cleaned (that shit is expensive). Plus, like opiejeanne, I got a really good deal on it — $300 (in 2006) for a silk organza designer dress that someone else had changed her mind about. I even got to wear it twice since we had a small wedding/reception in California and then my parents hosted a second reception in Illinois.
MattF
@The Raven on the Hill: Who needs a focus group when you already know the answer? ./sarcasm
Iowa Old Lady
Mr IOL’s workplace puts out a swap sheet and some entries make me cringe. “Wedding dress, never worn, size 12” Or even worse, “Prom dress, size 18, never worn.”
I believe Hemingway is supposed to have written “For sale, baby shoes, never worn.”
WaterGirl
@Iowa Old Lady: I really think Joe S. is trying to sabotage the Toddler because Joe S. wants to be the moderator of meet the old white guys.
geg6
@Howard Beale IV:
The hilarious thing is that the average viewer of that show is age 44. Young women don’t watch it. Their mothers do.
geg6
OT, but has anyone else been watching “The Chair” on Starz? I’m finding it fascinating. And the way they depict Pittsburgh is simply amazing and spot on.
Iowa Old Lady
@WaterGirl: I appalled by the people willing to stoke panic for ratings or political gain. You stir your population to panic, and bad things can happen.
g
Christ! I’ve avoided playing this ad for days now, since first seeing it appear online. So I finally played it. How incredibly sexist! The assumption that for young women, governance is nothing more than a style choice. The depiction of the young women as child-like little girls. The depiction of the mother as a shallow dimwit – so hostile and demeaning.
And hey aren’t older married women supposed to be Republican voters? Way to dis your own demographic, assholes.
Citizen_X
@dmsilev:
I take it they’re portraying some sort of hellish “wedding” ceremony to hideous Lovecraftian monstrosity Rick Scott, right? (Not saying that Rick Scott is that, but I don’t see much evidence for him being one of our species, y’know?)
The end involves tentacles, doesn’t it? There’s gotta be tentacles.
Aimai
@opiejeanne: i still have mine. 20 years later. It wont fit either of my daughters so im not sure why im saving it.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
@Howard Beale IV:
My wife and I rented tuxedos with skirts. We looked awesome.
Howard Beale IV
@Citizen_X:
Not even Japanese Tentacle Hentai would stoop to this level.
JR in WV
@Iowa Old Lady:
Mrs J too. She also made the shirt I wore, which has a high collar so I do didn’t have to wear a tie.
We also have my USN dress blues, that I couldn’t even get one leg into today. Dunno why on that one…
Tehanu
@Howard Beale IV:
My sister-in-law made my dress for me from a Vogue pattern (sweetheart neckline, lace overlay) at a cost of $35 for the material and it was beautiful. I have it in a box wrapped in acid-free paper because I’m a pack rat. Was hoping my daughter-in-law-to-be might want to wear it, but fashions had changed in the intervening 25 years so … maybe my grand-daughter-in-law-to-be, someday …
As for the ad: eewwwww. Did I actually see that? Need brain bleach.
Seanly
Props for the Liz Phair reference – one of my fav songs of hers.
That is one of the worst political ads I’ve ever seen. There was a very large creep factor with it to boot.
Mnemosyne
@Howard Beale IV:
I especially liked that the (self-identified) conservative women in the comments were all like, Uh, guys, that was pretty sexist. It seemed it was only the guys who thought there was no problem with the ad.
Jamey
@Howard Beale IV: maybe I listen to too many standup comics like Louis CK, but I was under the impression that there is no such thing as a married woman BJ populace…
WereBear
@opiejeanne: When I popped mine out of the box after fifteen years, it was still lovely: a Jessica McClintock one with lots of polyester lace.
I put it in a consignment shop last year and it sold to a local school’s drama club. It will be the go-to dress for many plays to come, and I couldn’t be happier.
JGabriel
@Citizen_X:
Someone really should snap that up for their User ID.
WereBear
@JGabriel: Unless that’s going to be the R Presidential candidate.
Just look at it! Our enemies will be so impressed!
Mrs. J.R.
@adepsis:
Don’t know where the heck Jim Moran is from, but he sure ain’t from WV. We have Rs here, and they’re expanding their reach, but none of them is quite that stupid.
Roger Moore
@Citizen_X:
I’ve seen enough hentai to know where this is going.
Doctor Science
I was the *fourth* woman to wear my wedding dress.
It was made by my great-aunt in 1922, for my grandmother (her sister). White silk brocade, tea length, loose flapper style with handkerchief hem.
It was worn by my grandmother, then worn again in the early 50s by her two daughters, my aunt and my mother. I wore it in the late 80s, with some slight adjustments. I’ve got it saved, in the hopes that my daughters may eventually use it.
Basically, I grew up knowing what wedding dress I’d wear.
JaneE
Aren’t some of the Republicans up for re-election? Democrats should point out that most women only use a wedding dress once. No matter how many times they marry. I don’t know anyone who has used their wedding dress for a renewal ceremony, but I guess some women could.
Ruckus
@Mrs. J.R.:
He’s from E. Virginia. Or as everyone else calls it, just plain Virginia. Dem Rep Virginia 8th.
Bill E Pilgrim
@adepsis: Hmm, that one sounds dubious, at best:
In any case I was just saying that it was “get a brain”, not “get a life”.
trollhattan
@opiejeanne:
Size 3?!? Many women officially now hate you. ;-)
Your ability to bargain-hunt, however, earns you a reality show of your own.
My bride made her dress and it’s stored away, somewhere, for our kid’s potential use some day. A true labor of love, that dress.
trollhattan
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Could have been “Get bwaaaaaains, morans!” That would have totally worked.
Tenar Darell
@Mnemosyne: The series was put out by the College Republicans. Are there women even involved with them anymore? Based on descriptions this million dollar waste of money reeks of not talking (or even listening) to women until after the script was written and the commercial was shot.
Bill E Pilgrim
@trollhattan: Oh I always thought the zombie thing as a sort of invisible subtext added to the virulence of that one. Right wingers proselytizing for others to become brain-dead seekers of brains like them, in other words.
WaterGirl
@Iowa Old Lady:
Yep. I believe that’s what we are seeing with all the shootings. It’s open season on black men for a reason, and it’s not a good one. Even the copies overreact to everything because they are in a panic, too.
I will never ever watch the evening show – maybe 20/20 – the one with promos that say things like “there’s an epidemic – could someone snatch your kids on the way home from school today?”, find out next week!!
Um, next week might be a little late, you fear mongering bastards!
trollhattan
@Bill E Pilgrim:
I’ll grant its likelihood. Think I get sidetracked by the mullet every time I see it (“Yoo-hoo, the ’80s called and want their haircut back.”) and now with the Cardinals tee, am wondering whether he’s actually a St Louis County cop?
cckids
@adepsis:
Well, this is what I found. The guy was a counter/pro-war protester objecting to an anti-Iraq war protest in St. Louis. His sign has spawned a thousand memes.
Bill E Pilgrim
@trollhattan: Exhibit A.
Not saying that part was intentional by the sign holder, mind you, but I think it definitely was part of why it caught on so well.
trollhattan
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Too funny!
JoyfulA
@Howard Beale IV: Married twice and never wore a wedding dress. “Weddings” are the world’s worst waste of money. My justice of the peace marriage lasted 37 years; for my second marriage 10 years ago, I went less formal, having learned that in PA a couple can self-officiate a wedding with the right paperwork and two witnesses.
Steeplejack
@Mrs. J.R.:
Jim Moran is my rep (VA-8), and he’s a Democrat.
ETA: And I don’t think he ever said what Adepsis says he did. Moran is a pretty vanilla Democrat
Diana
@PaulW: lemme add, it also assumes that what young women think about/want the most is to get married…
StringOnAStick
Wedding dress? Nope. We went to the county court house, filled out the paperwork and then went to have lunch, just the two of us. Nicest wedding I’ve ever been to, and no one had to make a hideous drive or get forced to buy a butt-ugly bridesmaid dress or rent a tux. Simple; easy.
Jay C
@JCT:
You mean like, also, half the State Legislatures in this country, and probably half the House of Representatives?
Adepsis
@Steeplejack: I had him representing the wrong state but he said it –
opiejeanne
@Aimai: The style of mine doesn’t suit either of my girls; it looks positively childish and I looked like a child bride in it. The “Little Girl” look was all the rage at the time. I was all of 19 and looked about 15 anyway, and the dress did not make me look like a mature adult. Well, legally I was an adult. The maturity is something I’m still working on.
My older daughter had a beautiful gown for her wedding. I
My younger daughter has been engaged twice but no weddings. It’s fine. We would rather she be sure than go through a divorce. She’s 4’10” so she’s not wearing my gown either. It would look ridiculous on her.
I’m not sure why I’ve kept it. We have my grandmother’s wedding dress, which was also her graduation dress. She and Grandpa ran off to get married when she was 17, in 1911? It was lovely but wouldn’t fit either of my girls. Grandma was a twig. My girls are twigs but have broader shoulders than Grandma did.
Here’s a photo:
https://flic.kr/p/ed99U
opiejeanne
@trollhattan: It was 1969, December, and the dress was made for an 8 foot tall woman. I had to stand on a chair so they could mark the hem, and the dress was still all over the floor. It was marked down 90% because the new styles were about to come out. My mother was annoyed that we were getting married on such short notice (I was a girl in trouble) because she thought she had no time to make a dress for me. She only took me shopping just to see what was out there, and this one dress was lurking in the back. She said she couldn’t have made one for so little, and we both liked it.
Back then I weighed 98 and was 5’2″; I could no more fit in that dress than fly to the moon by flapping my arms, but I wore a size 12 blouse when I bought standard clothes at that time. I don’t know who wore a size 3 unless it was in an expensive gown.
opiejeanne
@JoyfulA: I agree about the waste of money. Ours was in my church, and the reception was cake and punch in the Fellowship Hall. A friend from college used a pretty lawn and garden at one of the Claremont Colleges for her wedding, made her own dress and wedding cake, the bridesmaids made their dresses, the meal was potluck on picnic benches, and the college choir sang while a couple of the jazz band members provided backup music. It was lovely.
My kids couldn’t wrap their heads around that idea of cake and punch receptions when their friends were having lavish weddings and sit-down dinners, the cost of which would have made a nice down payment on a house. They are now in their 30s and talk about weddings that are much simpler, maybe on the lawn where we live now, and parties that amount to self-catered barbecues.
Bill Murray
@Tenar Darell: Are there women even involved with them anymore?
I believe there is one in NC who is trying to keep even conservative groups from registering voters on her campus
http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=5952
psychobroad
@opiejeanne: Very pretty! Hair bow a little distracting in photo, but I’m sure it was the latest fashion at the time. Thanks for sharing!
opiejeanne
@psychobroad: That was her graduation photo. I think she was 15 in it, and it was the hot look of the day.
ThresherK
@PaulW: “Why don’t the three of us get married?”
JCT
@Jay C: Exactly!
gelfling545
@opiejeanne: I went to a wedding last month for which the invitation read in lieu of a gift please bring a dish to share. The food ended up being nothing short of sumptuous and it is one of the most enjoyable weddings I’ve ever attended.
The Lodger
@adepsis: Silk-cotton blend? ABOMINATION! ABOMINATION!
brantl
Man, do those ads reek of desparation.
The Other Bob
Considering anyone with kids, owns a home, has certain pensions and donates to charity is payign higher taxes in Michigan under Snyder, it is stunning they will try to make the case otherwise.