The GOP's last hope: Ineffective billionaire-funded attack ads

Karl Rove wasting more of his friends' money. From an article noting the Romney campaign's new rightward shift:

Rick Wilson, a Republican strategist and ad-man, said the case against Obama's record will be made on the airwaves by the campaign and outside Republican groups ' and it no longer needs Romney as a daily spokesman.

"On the outside, here's what going to happen: we're going to nuke Barack Obama into radioactive sludge in the swing states with 3000-4000 points of TV in September," Wilson said. "Crossroads and Restore [two Republican SuperPACs] will do the same. It's going to be hitting in concert with the terrible economic news, and it'll strike a chord."

I like how this guy pretends that Obama has somehow gotten a pass the last several months. In fact, as of last week, Republican groups and the Romney campaign have hit Obama with about $170 million worth of attack ads. These are the approximate post-primary numbers. As of Sept. 9:

Romney campaign $60 million
Crossroads (Rove): $35 million
Restore our future (Romney Super PAC): $9 million
Americans for Prosperity (Koch bros): $24 million
Republican National Committee: $21.4 million
RNC & Mitt Romney Joint: $17.5 million

So here's the thing'negative advertising (and this has all been negative) has one purpose and one purpose only'to drive a candidate's favorability ratings down. So if Obama's faves have gone down, those ads have been money well spent. If Obama's faves haven't gone down, they've failed. Makes sense, right?

So how have they done?

So a week ago they had spent $170 million (much higher today) in order to lay waste to Obama's numbers, and the opposite has happened.

Furthermore, not only did this increase in Obama's numbers begin well before the conventions, in early August, but that upward trajectory continued through both conventions, the Republican one included. If a three-day unchallenged Republican infomercial couldn't dent that trajectory, nor the recent underwhelming jobs report ...

So now Republicans hope that wasting more billionaire dollars will suddenly change the equation, that what hasn't worked to date will suddenly lead to different results. Kind of like the old definition of insanity, huh, which is quite appropriate given the state of the current Republican Party.