J.D. Winteregg is getting lots of laughs for his
"electile dysfunction" themed ad targeting Ohio Republican Rep. John Boehner, but those laughs may not add up to votes, says Republican strategist Mike Reagan.
Winteregg, a tea party-affiliated challenger to Boehner in the Ohio primary, posted the ad on Sunday that mimics erectile dysfunction commercials and takes aim at Boehner's 23-year tenure in Congress, lobbying for a change. It has already generated more than 120,000 views, but Reagan said the spot misses its mark because most of Winteregg's target audience will never see it.
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"Who's really seen the ad? It's a social media ad, which is not where the Republican Party lives," Reagan told John Bachman and J.D. Hayworth Tuesday on "America's Forum" on Newsmax TV.
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"The Republican Party is doing classes right now in the use of smartphones because they don't even know how to push the button … The people who are going to be seeing that will laugh and they'll chortle and what have you, but those who pull the lever on Election Day, those Republicans, most of them aren't in that 21st century social media and will probably pull it for speaker Boehner," Reagan said.
Winteregg has nothing to lose because as a longshot challenger, any publicity is good publicity.
"When you do something of that nature, you're taking a chance," Reagan said. "But when your name is J.D. Winteregg, the fact of the matter is you've got to draw attention to yourself in some way, and in politics, even bad attention is good if they know how to check the box and write their name on Election Day."
But ultimately, the ad highlights a bigger problem for the Republican Party: the continued rift between party rank-and-file and tea party backers — especially its more fringe followers.
"At some point you've got to sit there and weed out some of the wackos within your own organization and say, 'listen, we just can't support that,'" Reagan said. "If they're going to have a tea party with the people like [Texas Sen.] Ted Cruz or [Utah Republican] Mike Lee or whatever, have that. But the wackos that are in it, the kooks that are in it, you've got to just weed them out because they are giving your area tea party a really bad name."
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