The Thread Spot and the Daisy Spot

Crossroads GPS has a striking new spot, as Melanie Mason writes at The Los Angeles Times:

Conservative group Crossroads GPS, co-founded by Republican strategist Karl Rove, has weighed in on Washington’s economic crisis du jour with a new ad released Wednesday, saying America’s economy is “hanging by a thread” and laying the blame on President Obama.

The new ad campaign, which totals $3.5 million for a two-week run in Colorado, North Carolina, New Mexico, Iowa, Nevada and Virginia, doesn’t explicitly mention the debt ceiling debate that has paralyzed the capital in recent weeks. But the commercial’s warning that the country is “near the breaking point” dovetails with the coming Tuesday deadline for Congress to raise the debt limit, after which the country will default on its obligations. (See video below.)

In the commercial, shipping crates—each meant to signify a strain on the economy, such as the high unemployment rate and rising gas prices—dangle precipitously by fraying ropes in a computer animation. “Maybe we won’t be crushed when our economy snaps,” the narrator says. “But someone will,” as the image of a young blond girl fills the screen.

The wide-eyed youth harkens back to Lyndon Johnson’s famous 1964 “Daisy” ad, in which footage of a little girl playing with flowers was ominously juxtaposed against footage of a mushroom cloud.