Alex Castellanos of subliminal message fame is now an "outside advisor" to the McCain campaign, according to the New York Times:
Alex Castellanos, formerly the top advertising strategist for Mitt Romney, has been a regular guest on CNN’s bipartisan panel on Democratic election nights. Mr. Castellanos is also now an outside adviser to Mr. McCain’s advertising team.
Readers may remember him as the perpetrator of the infamous RATS commercial. (Here's a YouTube video of it.)
Of course Castellanos's checkered past as a negative advertising specialist and dirty trickster goes way beyond...
...what may be his most famous Orwellian ad. He may first have gained notoriety for being fired by Jeb Bush for running a false Willie Horton style ad against Lawton Chiles during the 1994 campaign of Governor of Florida.
Salon.com's March 15, 2004 story on Castellanos, "Going Negative", carries the following epigraph:
He's the father of the modern attack ad, and he's behind the Bush campaign's new wave of anti-Kerry spots. Alex Castellanos is known as vicious, irresponsible -- and effective.
If this sounds like hyperbole rest assured that it isn't.
Perhaps Castellanos most famous ad was perpetrated in behalf of Jesse Helms. Again from the Salon.com piece:
In 1990, working for Republican Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, he produced perhaps the most racially divisive TV ad in campaign history. Called "White Hands," it featured an angry white worker crumpling up a job rejection notice. He had lost out because "they had to give it to a minority."
Maybe Castellanos is a racist, maybe not. But if his research indicates that a racist ad will help his candidate, he's already proven once that it is not beyond him.
He has already begun to poke at the hornet's nest of identity politics in a big way by calling Hillary Clinton a "White Bitch" during an appearance on CNN. He said it while he was already advising the McCain campaign.
John McCain is sitting on a very big powder keg with a lit match called "Alex Castellanos" in his hand. Can he possibly not be aware of it?
Lindsay Beyerstein did a nice job of covering this story, as of May 21st, in her blog Majikthise.