'Morning Joe' Team Calls New MoveOn.org Anti-McCain Ad a 'Cheap Shot'

June 17th, 2008 3:05 PM

Here's something you don't see every day: four people on MSNBC agreeing that an ad attacking Republican presidential nominee John McCain is a "cheap shot."

Yet, that's exactly what transpired Tuesday morning when Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Willie Geist, and John Ridley discussed the new ad just released by the far-left MoveOn.org suggesting that if McCain is elected president, the baby pictured will be fighting in Iraq eighteen years from now.

First up to criticize the piece was NPR's Ridley (video embedded right, use scrollbars to center):

I don't think it's a good ad. It's certainly a powerful ad...I need to see something that's going to emote me more than momentarily saying, "You can't have my kid a hundred years from now."...The ad does feel in some ways shrill as opposed to touching me as a father and reminding me of my kids.

Brzezinski chimed in:

Well, I'm just wondering what you think about the use of the 100 year, 'cause I just feel like at this point, it looks like a cheap shot. That, that line has been almost, practically revoked by John McCain, or at least clarified.

Scarborough added his two cents:

Well, and even Frank Rich, you know a guy we love having on who has been critical of John McCain and George Bush's position on the war says that that's a cheap shot.

Finally, Geist spoke:

It might be fair, it might be effective. I just oppose dangling babies in front of cameras to do that.

Bravo, folks.

Moving forward, Hot Air's Allah Pundit has identified the REAL stupidity in this ad:

In which a 90-year-old Maverick, serving his fifth term as president after declaring martial law and suspending the Constitution, conscripts young Alex to walk the beat in Baghdad. Either that or mom here hasn’t yet grasped that (a) President McCain won’t be setting Iraq policy for the next 18 years, let alone the next hundred, (b) MoveOn’s candidate of choice has himself been dropping some dark hints lately about “tactical readjustments,” and (c) whether McCain and the military can have her son is, um, up to her son, not her.

Delicious. Of course, as Allah pointed out, this ad also assumed that when this baby grows up, there would be a draft requiring him to serve.

The left in our nation always seem to forget that ours is a volunteer military. Does it represent stupidity on their part, or intellectual dishonesty?

You decide.