What I thought was going to be aired in a few spots is apparently going National big time, to the tune of $2 M.
Josh Marshall reports that he is receiving emails from diverse parts of the country reporting its airing during the football game.
From the linked article at TPM:
Get ready for a deluge of Wright rantings.
The National Republican Trust PAC, which has been airing an ad attacking Barack Obama's association with Reverend Wright in three battleground states, has now put down for a national buy on five networks that will last from now through election day, a consultant with the group confirms to me.
The ad will run nationally on Fox, CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC for the next five days, the consultant, Rick Wilson, says -- "all the way until election day."
This seems to be the last Hail Mary. Now we'll really get to see if Wright has any more legs. We'll have to watch the trackers, because some final polls have come in already.
I wonder if the Obama campaign may have something up their sleeve to counter this? It couldn't hurt!
Are we concerned?
Update [2008-11-3 0:58:32 by msirt]: As reported by Ben Smith, David Axelrod may have underestimated the scope of this a bit:
Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, said a pair of Republican ads featuring Jeremiah Wright aren't airing widely enough or having enough impact to lead Obama to air a response ad.
Axelrod said he wasn't certain that a Pennsylvania Republican Party ad released today had aired more than once, and he said that while the National Republican Trust PAC had spent more than $1 million (by his measure) airing their spot, it was in a national buy too diffuse to make a major impact.
"We thought about [airing a response ad] and we had it ready, but it just didn't seem like enough firepower to matter," he said.
Or does this still conform to his strategic analysis?