Opinion: Mitt Romney’s “Ocean” ad

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign is staying on the offensive in Iowa and New Hampshire and intensifying its presence in South Carolina with a new television ad set to air in the trio of states, each of which hosts early contests in the nominating process.

Entitled ‘Ocean’ by the Republican’s campaign, the spot is not a surprise attempt to court the environmental vote. Instead, it’s squarely aimed at social conservatives, with Romney saying in a voice-over as waves crash on a beach that he’s ‘deeply concerned’ about the culture --- the ocean, methaphorically --- that surrounds today’s children. He then says he wants to clean up those ‘waters.’ One example: ‘I’d like to keep pornography from coming up on their computers.’

The ad’s imagery, as Romney notes, is borrowed from a column Peggy Noonan penned days after the 1999 shootings at Colorado’s Columbine High School. She wrote that the two teens who set out to massacre classmates ‘inhaled too deep the ocean in which they swam.’

Jonathan Martin of Politico.com smartly analyzes the politics surrounding the new ad, especially its significance in terms of South Carolina. And as Martin notes, it surfaces --- perhaps not coincidentially --- in the wake of recent criticism of Romney for not publicly making an effort to halt in-room X-rated movie offerings at Marriott hotels when he served on the Marriott board of directors.

-- Don Frederick