Fake Trump Photos, Fake Trump Voice

If MLK were alive today, I have no doubt in my mind that he would be close friends with President Trump.

Two men who risked everything for equality. Two men who were spied on by the government.

MLK and DJT would have so much to talk about. pic.twitter.com/nIqR0LqbL5

— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) July 18, 2023

Two of our nation’s greatest advocates for Civil Rights: MLK and DJT. pic.twitter.com/O3TxhqWXiB

— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) July 15, 2023

Matt Novak at Forbes:

The fake images of King and Trump together were created using artificial intelligence software, though it’s not clear precisely which program was used. AI generator tools like DALL-E, Stability Diffusion and Midjourney allow anyone to create a photo-realistic image simply by using a text prompt and describing the scene they’d like to see created. Companies with large photo libraries have filed suit against various image generators this year, including a lawsuit from Getty Images against Stability AI filed in February.

Louis Jacobson and Loreben Tuquero at Poynter:

Never Back Down, a political action committee supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for the Republican presidential nomination, used former President Donald Trump’s own words against him in a new ad.

Candidates do that all of the time. In this case, however, the ad-makers pushed the boundaries by manipulating audio to read out loud an attack against Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds in Trump’s voice.

The message spoken in the ad accurately reflects what Trump wrote on Truth Social, but he did not speak those words himself.

The ad criticized Trump for “attacking” Reynolds, a popular fellow Republican from one of the most important early states in the presidential primary calendar.

The post on Trump’s Truth Social platform said, “I opened up the Governor position for Kim Reynolds, & when she fell behind, I ENDORSED her, did big Rallies, & she won. Now, she wants to remain ‘NEUTRAL.’ I don’t invite her to events!”

A viewer wouldn’t know that Trump didn’t say this out loud: Never Back Down took Trump’s words and used artificial intelligence to create audio of a Trump-like voice reading them.

 

How Not to Handle the Press

At The Washington Post, Amber Phillips reports that Rep. Rod Blum (R-IA) screwed up an interview.

KCRG-TV reporter Josh Scheinblum asks Blum, who voted for the controversial House health-care bill last week, why he's checking people's IDs for a town hall later that night. For several months now, Republican lawmakers across the nation have been flooded with constituents — many but not all of them on the left — angry about the proposed changes to health care.

Blum's response to Scheinblum's question: “I don’t represent all Iowans — I represent the First District of Iowa. That would be like saying, ‘Shouldn’t I be able to, even though I live in Dubuque, be able to go vote in Iowa City during the election because I’d like to vote in that district instead?’”

“Would you still take donations from a Republican in Iowa City?” Scheinblum asks.

Blum smiles a wry smile, throws up his hands and bounces out of his chair. “I'm done here,” he says as his hands reach for his microphone to rip it off. “This is ridiculous. This is ridiculous,” he says as he unravels his microphone and drops it into Scheinblum's hands. “He’s just going to sit here and badger me,” Blum says to the children standing around him, who were supposed to underscore his support for a community center, as he walks away.

Ethanol Loses a Round

Timothy P. Carney reports at The Washington Examiner:

The ethanol lobby is a paper tiger, and Ted Cruz just tore it to shreds.

Cruz, the country's most famous enemy of the federal ethanol mandate, just won Iowa, winning more votes than any person in the history of the caucuses.

Cruz thus busted the myth that you can't mess with the ethanol lobby and still win Iowa. The lesson goes beyond ethanol: The only constituency for corporate welfare is on K Street.

Politicians are fooled into thinking corporate welfare is important to voters because politicians spend an inordinate amount of time with the powerful people to whom corporate welfare is vitally important. That's why every candidate who has tried to win Iowa has prostrated him or herself before ethanol.

They thought they had to. Cruz proved they didn't.

Cruz campaigned on a five-year wind-down of ethanol. Other candidates, like Jeb Bush, said they would consider winding down the mandate in 2022 — during a presumptive second term. Cruz's plan involves a 20 percent reduction of the mandate in his first year in office, and the same cut each year until it zeroes out.

A Romney Path Without Ohio or Virginia

It  is just possible for Romney to win without Ohio or Virginia.  An independent poll finds that Obama and Romney are in a statistical tie in Minnesota.  If he can carry that state, along with Iowa and Wisconsin, then Romney could get the minimum 270.

Here is a map from the RCP do-it-yourself page:

Registered Independents

A new report from Third Way examines voter registration data, showing an increase in the the number of voters not formally affiliated with either party.

The number of registered Independents has increased since 2008 in many of the battleground states that will decide the 2012 election. Among 12 likely battleground states, 8 have partisan voter registration—Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. In 7 of these 8 battleground states (all but Iowa), Independent registration gained ground relative to both parties in terms of voter registration between 2008 and 2011.

In each battleground state, Democratic registration fared worse relative to both Republican and Independent registration between 2008 and 2011. In all eight states, Republican registration gained relative to Democratic registration between 2008 and 2011.

The importance of Independents has grown over time as voters are increasingly leaving the traditional two-party system. Based on the combination of this general trend and the rise in both registration and self-identification of Independents since 2008, the most likely scenario for 2012 is that Independents will make up a bigger portion of the electorate next year than in any election since 1976, based on national exit polls.

Open publication - Free publishing

Iowa Asterisks

In the Iowa caucuses last night, Mitt Romney won by a mere 8 votes over Rick Santorum, whose come-from-behind showing will enter American political lore.  The outcome will greatly help Santorum, but keep three asterisks in mind.

1.  Turnout in the Iowa caucuses was 122,255 voters.  Though higher than GOP turnout in 2008, that figure amounted to about only one-fifth of registered Republicans in the state.  Here's another way to put it:  statewide Iowa turnout was smaller than the number of Republicans (123,625) who voted in the 2008 Republican primary in Santa Clara County, California.


2.  Iowa did not select a single national convention delegate last night.  The caucus results were merely a poll.  In separate votes, attendees selected delegates to county conventions, who in turn will participate in a process that will eventually result in the selection of national convention delegates.  Throughout this process, the caucus results bind no one to vote a certain way.


3.  The Iowa results do not necessarily predict the eventual nominee.  In 1980, Ronald Reagan lost Iowa to George H.W. Bush but went on to win the nomination. Eight years later, Bush finished third, behind Bob Dole and Pat Robertson, but also went on to win.  Four years ago, Mike Huckabee won in Iowa, only to lose  the nomination to John McCain.

Social Media, The Presidential Race, and a 9-Year-Old with Autism

Social media allow citizens to influence campaign discussions. Lin Wessels has been recording her son's encounters with Republican presidential candidates campaigning for the Iowa caucuses.  She has posted the results on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.


Reposted from Autism Policy and Politics:

Sam Wessels, a nine-year-old Iowan with autism, has been asking presidential candidates about their positions on autism.  A previous post showed his encounter with Ron Paul.  Others are below.


Mitt Romney:

 

Rick Santorum:




Newt Gingrich:



Michele Bachmann:

Video Footage in Attack Ads

An earlier post mentioned Andrew Kaczynski, a college student who posts video clips of current presidential candidates.  He is part of a bigger story. A few years ago, Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi appeared in a spot ad about climate change.  Gingrich now regrets it, as The New York Times reports:

He has good reason to fret. Scenes from that 2008 public service announcement appear in no fewer than four television advertisements now running in Iowa and can be found in numerous videos on the Web, all made by rival Republican presidential campaigns and outside political groups that are trying to sink Mr. Gingrich’s candidacy.

It is the attack-ad technique of choice for the 2012 election: anything you have said or done on film will be held against you. And its prevalence has helped make the Republican primary campaign a ferociously negative contest. Nowhere is that more obvious than in Iowa, where commercials that portray candidates in an unflattering light now account for two-thirds of the money spent on advertising for the caucuses.
...
Turning the candidates’ own words against them is, of course, one of the older tricks in the political playbook. But today more than ever, when a candidate’s every kaffeeklatsch, rope-line handshake and editorial board interview is captured on camera, there is a wealth of material. With news outlets like C-Span digitizing their video archives and making them available online, old footage is easy to come by. Anyone with an Internet connection and the patience to conduct a lengthy Google search can be an opposition researcher. And the willingness of some campaigns not only to employ old film but to rip it out of context seems to be greater than ever.        

Gingrich Bingo

Looking for a way to occupy time in the days between Christmas and the Iowa caucuses? As noted before, Newt Gingrich tends to favor certain words.  Using a Bingo generator (example here), one can devise Bingo sheets suitable for use during speeches, debates, and commercials.  Here's an example:

Politically-correct	Dramatically	Anti-American
Corrupt	Ronald Reagan	Grotesque
Entrepreneurial	Absurd	Centralized

Here are some of the many words that you can plug in:


Negative adjectives:

• Secular
• Socialist
• Grotesque
• Radical
• Absurd
• Sick
• Pathetic
• Corrupt
• Dumb
• Centralized
• Politically correct
• Left-wing
• Unelected
• Anti-family, anti-job, anti-American

Negative nouns

• Bureaucracy
• Welfare state
• Entitlement
• Big government
• Elite
• Machine (as in political machine)
• Hollywood
• Academia
• Union bosses
• Trial lawyers

Intensifiers:

• Radically 
• Dramatically
• Fundamentally
• Enormously
• Extraordinarily
• Vastly
• Profoundly

Phrases and References:

• A right to pursue happiness, not a right to happiness stamps.
• Bold colors, not pale pastels.
• Vision, strategy, projects, and tactics.
• Listen, learn, help, and lead.
• Any battle in the American Revolution or Civil War

Positive adjectives:

• Conservative
• Opportunity
• Entrepreneurial
• Transformational
• Solutions-oriented
• Pro-American

Heroes:

• Ronald Reagan
• Theodore Roosevelt
• Pope John Paul II
• Winston Churchill
• Abraham Lincoln

Villains:

• Jimmy Carter
• Bill Ayers
• Barack Obama
• Barney Frank
• Nancy Pelosi
• Harry Reid

Presidential Nomination Campaigns Are Changing

Michael Barone names three "rules" of presidential nomination campaigns that seem to be changing.

First, up-front money is essential.

In 1992, Jerry Brown kept repeating his campaign's 800 number so people could phone in contributions. In 2008, and especially this time, candidates are raising money through email. That's far faster and cheaper than snail mail.

Money can rush in rapidly. Scott Brown's Massachusetts Senate campaign was taking in $1 million in the last days after polls showed him within striking range. Herman Cain was deluged with millions after the news media reported he had been accused of sexual harassment.

Second, personal contact is the main way to win Iowa and New Hampshire.

But current Iowa polling But current Iowa polling shows Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Mitt Romney in a tie for the lead there. According to the tracker, in the 38 days since Oct. 15, Gingrich has had Iowa campaign events on eight days, Cain on three and Romney on two. Rick Santorum has had Iowa events on 19 of those days and is the only candidate to have held them in all the state's 99 counties. But he's averaging only 4 percent in Iowa polls taken during that time.

Instead of personal contact, voters seem to be making decisions based on performance in debates, which thanks to cable news have been viewed by many more voters than in the past, and by what they've been reading and watching on the Internet. [See here for a survey on how debates are influencing Republicans.]

Third, religious and social conservatives drive GOP nominations.

Iowa caucuses are open to anyone who shows up, and in 2008 only 119,000 Republicans did so in a state of 3 million. That leaves a large potential reservoir of newcomers this time.

Iowa pollster Ann Selzer reports less enthusiasm among evangelical Christians in this cycle, and some local Republicans predict a larger turnout this time. That could mean an infusion of new participants, with results that can't be extrapolated from past contests. [Also note that libertarian Ron Paul is doing well in some Iowa polls.]

Tax Incentives for Movie Shoots

Our chapter on federalism explains how states use tax breaks and other incentives to compete for business. Variety reports that Iowa recently lost movie location shoots when it suspended its production tax credit.

Incentives don't need to be eliminated or scaled back to scare away production. These days, producers start looking at other locations as soon as a governor indicates a desire to tinker with a tax credit.

"What the industry always wants most of all is certainty," says California Film Commission director Amy Lemisch. "They want to know what they're going to get, what the rules are and that they won't change."

California got an added bit of certainty last month when Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law extending the state's $100 million-a-year tax credit through the end of the 2014-2015 fiscal year.

New Mexico wasn't so lucky. In January, Gov. Susana Martinez came into office vowing to drastically scale back the state's popular incentive program, which had attracted such big-budget films as "Cowboys & Aliens" and "Terminator: Salvation."

In the end, the state preserved its 25% tax credit and added a still-generous $50 million annual cap. But the damage was done.

"For first eight months of the new administration, nobody really knew what was going on, so therefore the number of pilots and (other projects) is way down from what it usually is," says Lance Hool, CEO of the newly opened Santa Fe Studios. In the meantime, "the money for the rebates sits there, waiting to be used."

A Straw Poll

Straw polls are nonbinding ballots at party events, and are not a scientific measure of partisan sentiment. Still, they matter, reports the Globe Gazette of Mason City, Iowa:

Next month’s Iowa Republican Party straw poll in Ames is all about the bounce.
Either the upward bounce the non-binding, unscientific poll will give the candidate or candidates who outperform expectations, or the bounce out of the 2012 GOP sweepstakes that it could deliver to a presidential hopeful who shows poorly.

The straw poll is essentially a party fundraising exercise, but it has become a major political event because it takes place in the state that traditionally launches the presidential selection process every four years.

“It’s a completely meaningless event with tremendous political impact,” said Drake University political science professor Dennis Goldford. “Nobody’s elected to anything, but people derive some conclusions from this.”
...

Early public opinion polls have placed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Bachmann at the front of the still-developing GOP field, said Dave Peterson, an associate political science professor at Iowa State University.

The straw poll will be the first significant test of which candidates “are going to perform in putting boots on the ground.”

Peterson said early polls had New York’s Donald Trump as a contender, but he “took off like a rocket and crashed like a meteor” and the same may be true for candidates who fail to produce double-digit support at Ames.

Faith and Politics in Iowa

The Sioux City Journal reports that religion will be an important element in the important Iowa caucuses:

Morningside College political science professor Patrick McKinlay said a significant number of Northwest Iowans want to back a candidate possessing a deep religious faith. Many of those Iowans are social conservatives, to whom defending traditional marriage and scaling back abortion are important, he said.

"It is necessary to understand a candidate's personal faith as more of a lens through which both the candidate and the voters see the world in a similar way," McKinlay said. "That shapes how you see matters of the economy and matters of foreign policy and so forth."

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But McKinlay said candidates and Iowans don't have countless hours to sit down and get to know one another, so campaign speeches often contain "cues" to elicit support.

For professed Christian officeseekers looking to connect to evangelicals, the words "God" and "faith" are used repeatedly, McKinlay said. He said one of the best examples was when President George W. Bush, running for re-election in 2004, relied heavily on such words when making a Tyson Events Center before thousands in Sioux City.

"I could hear in his narrative very important and very clear indicators: 'Here is where I am.' I can tell you, the crowd was there with him," McKinlay said.

"Language and politics are very much entwined. We use language to communicate deeper meanings about what we believe. Especially, when it is something about faith, something about values, then these candidates need to help the caucusgoer perceive where they are."

Iowa Caucus Poll

Our chapter on elections and campaigns describes the presidential nominating process, including the Iowa party caucuses. The Detroit News reports:

Michigan native Mitt Romney and tea party star Michele Bachmann have an early edge against Republican presidential rivals in the key state of Iowa, according to new poll of likely Republican Iowa caucus-goers.

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor who placed second in the first-of-the-nation caucus state in the 2008 Republican nomination battle, garnered 23 percent of support while Bachmann received 22 percent, according to the poll conducted for The Des Moines Register. The poll comes about eight months before the Iowa caucuses, which will be held Feb. 6 and mark the kickoff of the nomination process.

The poll did not test support for Rep. Thad McCotter, R-Livonia, because he hasn't decided whether he will enter the presidential race. Those polled were allowed to add their preference for candidates not yet announced, but none named McCotter, Des Moines Register political columnist Kathie Obradovich told The News.

...

The big winner of the poll is Iowa native and Minnesota congresswoman Bachmann, who formally launches her campaign Monday in Waterloo, her birthplace. The poll's big loser was former Minnesota Tim Pawlenty, who netted just 6 percent of support despite setting up a big organization in the state in his effort to position himself up as the best establishment alternative to Romney.

"This is very important for Michele Bachmann," said Grand Valley State University political science professor Erika King. "It gives her more of a sense to say, 'Look, I have the backing of actual voters polled.' It helps with media coverage and with fundraising."

Michael Traugott, a political science professor at the University of Michigan, said McCotter faces an uphill battle in Iowa should he decide to run for president.

"He is starting too late. Most of the good (political) resources are gone," Traugott said. "This is why it is getting too late for Sarah Palin, who has name recognition and can raise money, but all of the biggest consultants and organizers have been taken up by others."

But Grand Valley's King said McCotter, by elevating his name recognition and stature as a national figure, could enhance his chances of being considered as by the eventual Republican presidential nominee for his or her vice presidential running mate. "That has happened before," she said.

At Politico, Mike Allen reminds us that early Iowa polls do not necessarily predict the outcome:

"The Register’s headline on its first poll of the 2008 cycle (May 2007): “Edwards, Romney lead early.” In case you missed it, the resounding Iowa caucus winners were Obama and Huckabee. (Giuliani was tied for second with McCain!)"