Going After the Roadblock Republicans

{cross-posted at the johnkerry.com blog}

I’m here today because I don’t think this is a time for us to just join a debating society or echo chamber where we talk exclusively to each other; Republicans are denying the Senate a chance to find a new course in Iraq, so what are we going to do about it?

I think we need to run radio ads in the states of the most vulnerable of the Roadblock Republicans who stand in the way, making it clear to everyone that those Senators don’t deserve to be reelected because of their continued support for the Bush Doctrine of escalation without end.

And I want you to make the ad.

You may have heard about this effort; I emailed it out to the JohnKerry.com community last week. But I wanted to make sure all of you here at Daily Kos heard about this as well.

Simply put, it’s been the voice of activists that have gotten us this far in the Iraq debate, not the soundbites and cookie-cutter ads of Madison Avenue media firms. So I want to empower you to speak in this radio campaign. User generated content changed Presidential debates; I know it can help change the next election around this most critical issue.

And that’s the reason we’re running this contest. We want you to submit scripts for a 30-second radio ad we can air in the states of the Senators we’ve targeted in our Roadblock Republicans campaign. We’ll whittle it down a bit for simplicities sake to the top twenty, we’ll record them with an announcer, then put them up for a vote from everyone. And then we air the winner. Then we’ll fundraise to run it, and you can choose with your contribution where we will air the spot. No political professionals producing the spot or choosing where to run it. It’s all done by you.

And you can do whatever you want with the ad. You can use a story from your life and put it in your own voice (maybe you know someone in Iraq or maybe you are a veteran of the conflict yourself), or you can make a factual case on why voters should consider someone else because of this issue. And what you do can be the ad that airs against the Roadblock Republicans.

Go here to submit an ad.

And let others know about this as well. If you know someone with a way with words and a desire to make a difference, tell them about this. You can give them the link to this post, or you can send them to this page, which explains the contest a bit.

Good luck!

update: Thanks everyone for your enthusiasm for this. I've read through the comments, and I've seen some good ideas, so make sure to submit them. I read one person who asked about Senator McConnell and another who asked about which Senators were on our list. So here's the list of those we’ve highlighted thus far in the Roadblock Republicans campaign, all Republicans up for reelection next year who have blocked debate on a deadline for redeployment from Iraq, and all of them vulnerable if we work hard enough:

McConnell (KY)
Coleman (MN)
Sununu (NH)
Collins (ME)
Dole (NC)
Cornyn (TX)