Repigs pull out of Wisconsin and Maine to focuses on red states

[NNN0LHI]

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5glxLRJGYXl2qCzirOL_o5HIuXamAD93R52C80

By JIM KUHNHENN – 15 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican National Committee is halting presidential ads in Wisconsin and Maine, turning much of its attention to usually Republican states where GOP nominee John McCain shows signs of faltering.

The party's independent ad operation is doubling its budget to about $10 million and focusing on crucial states such as Colorado, Missouri, Indiana and Virginia where Democrat Barack Obama has established a foothold, according to a Republican strategist familiar with presidential ad placements.

Florida and North Carolina have also been in the RNC ad mix. Pennsylvania is the only Democratic leaning swing state apparently left in the party's ad campaign.

The shift in advertising resources suggests that the RNC has decided to focus on defending reliably Republican-voting states against Obama's onslaught of advertising. Flush with money, Obama is outspending the joint efforts of the Republican Party and the McCain campaign by more than 2-1.

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. Woo hoo! And the end of the Roman Empire is begun!

[MiniMe]

2. They are out of money

I live in the DC area, which includes part of Maryland and Northern Virginia along with DC, so our local stations include a battleground state. I haven't seen a McCain ad for ages, but there are tons of Obama ads on. A great many of them are positive ads, the ones about his Grandmother, his Grandfather, and how he grew up. In fact, most of the ads are positive now.

McCain is trying to make points about how much money Barack has spent on negative advertising, but the real point should be what percentage of the total ads running are positive vs negative. McCain's ads are almost all negative, he just isn't spending much on ads these days. Virginia is a huge state, and they may be concentrating their ads in the rest of the state, I don't know because I don't see those local stations.

McCain's biggest mistake with "pulling out" of states is that if he is going to do it, he should just do it. Announcing it is the mistake.