Obama Gets Tough in Sharp New Ads

Chrysler ad a political football

(NEWSER) - God bless America ... and the Chrysler bailout ... seemed to be the message that left football fans misty-eyed after Clint Eastwood's Super Bowl Chrysler ad. It's "halftime" in America, and we're all pulling together for a brighter economic future, says the gravelly-voiced star. But Eastwood was opposed to the bailout that made the Chrysler turnaround possible, and now the ad has become a political football as Dems score points with it and the GOP tackles it, notes ABC News . “Saving the American Auto Industry: Something Eminem and Clint Eastwood can agree on," crowed White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer on Twitter, referring to Eminem’s Chrysler ad during last year's Super Bowl. "Powerful spot," chimed in Obama re-election strategist David Axelrod. But George Bush's political maven Karl Rove snapped that he was "offended" by the ad, which he argued was orchestrated by the administration to paint a rosy future. More»

And Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin is still pretty scary: reactions

(NEWSER) - If you thought Julianne Moore's Sarah Palin was terrifying in the first Game Change teaser , wait until you see her in the full trailer, where she utters lines such as, "We have to win this thing. I so don’t want to go back to Alaska." Watch below, then read on for some reactions:

• This will clearly be "a Frankenstein-esque story about McCain’s staffers coming to regret the choice they made in bringing a little-known governor into the limelight," writes Jon Bershad at Mediaite . "The full trailer ... gives us even more famous actors getting their turn to stare in horror at the 'monster' they’ve created."

HBO debuts first teaser

(NEWSER) - For all of you who have spent the past nine months wondering how Julianne Moore’s Sarah Palin impersonation will stack up against Tina Fey’s , you finally have your answer. HBO debuted its first teaser trailer for Game Change, the film due in March that's based on the Mark Halperin-John Heilemann book about the 2008 presidential election. Neither Ed Harris as John McCain nor Woody Harrelson as top adviser Steve Schmidt sound much like their real-life counterparts, notes David Jackson in USA Today , but Moore’s Palin is spot-on: Numerous publications including People , New York , the Huffington Post , and Jezebel are fairly impressed. More»

He claims GOP wants to 'zero out' Israel aid: Justin Elliott

(NEWSER) - It's become popular for GOP presidential candidates to advocate "zeroing out" all foreign aid, and Barack Obama's campaign is now trying to use that against them—in what Justin Elliott of Salon calls an "incredibly dishonest" attack. Obama's Facebook ad text reads, "No Aid to Israel?" Click it, and you'll bring up this page , which alleges that Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Perry want to cut off Israeli aid, in an act of "extreme isolationism." More»

Arianna Huffington, Michael Gerson disagree

(NEWSER) - The media has largely ignored Mitt Romney’s first TV ad , and Arianna Huffington is outraged. The ad includes a wildly out-of-context 2008 clip of President Obama saying, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” It fails to mention that Obama was quoting the McCain campaign. “This is far from the garden-variety truth stretching we're used to in political advertising,” Huffington fumes in her eponymous Post . “This is so breathtakingly cynical it should cause us to question whether a candidate that would put it forth is fit for any public office.” More»