Digby: Gearing Up

Amanda Marcotte and quite a few others are upset that NARAL pulled their ad. But I think the ad did what it was intended to do. They were only running it in a couple of states, remember. It was designed to cause controversy. And it succeeded. Yesterday the story was on the front page of the NY Times.

They used the swift boat model. Oh yes, all the congoscenti are clutching their pearls and the anti-choice groups are running their own ads and everybody's in a tizzy. But just as the swift boat ads were targeting veterans and military types who were possibly lulled into complacency by Kerry's war record, NARAL is targeting pro-choice women who may not yet realize how high the stakes have suddenly become. They are trying to wake them up to the threat and sometimes it takes a firestorm to do that. The details don't matter, it's the headline and the image.