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Romney ad links Obama to Che, Chavez, and Castro

When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he’d vote for Barack Obama if he could, you knew it was only a matter of time until the president’s opponents used the unwelcome endorsement against him. First there was the ad released by Gary Bauer’s Campaign for American Values PAC on the "dictator vote" that Obama had secured ...

By Uri Friedman

November 1, 2012, 4:25 PM

When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he'd vote for Barack Obama if he could, you knew it was only a matter of time until the president's opponents used the unwelcome endorsement against him. First there was the ad released by Gary Bauer's Campaign for American Values PAC on the "dictator vote" that Obama had secured from Chavez, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and former Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he’d vote for Barack Obama if he could, you knew it was only a matter of time until the president’s opponents used the unwelcome endorsement against him. First there was the ad released by Gary Bauer’s Campaign for American Values PAC on the "dictator vote" that Obama had secured from Chavez, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and former Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Now, as the Miami Herald reports, the Romney campaign itself has released a Spanish-language ad on Spanish-language TV in Florida that shows Chavez and Raul Castro’s niece Mariela expressing support for Obama, and even tries to tie the president to Che Guevara by noting that the Environmental Protection Agency sent out an Hispanic Heritage Month email containing a picture with a mural of the Marxist revolutionary in the background. The Obama campaign has responded by emphasizing the administration’s efforts to expand trade with Latin America and criticizing Romney for "giving Chavez the attention he thrives on and that he doesn’t deserve."

Romney approved the message, but he isn’t promoting the ad on his YouTube channel and the Miami Herald says the campaign has refused repeated requests to furnish the ad to the paper. Why? Perhaps because the spot stoops pretty low in sending out subliminal messages about Obama being a closet socialist. Poor email judgment on the part of the EPA does not make Obama a Marxist revolutionary, and superimposing Obama’s face on a famous Che poster — and then showing the poster again, this time with Che’s face — probably won’t convince voters otherwise.

The ad also doesn’t mention that Fidel Castro has said a robot would be a better president than Obama, or that Chavez once called the president a "clown" after Obama criticized Venezuela’s ties to Cuba and Iran. During the 2008 election, Obama’s aides had to tamp down controversy after a flag with an image of Che Guevara was spotted at a volunteer office unaffiliated with the campaign. Are we really doing this again?

Uri Friedman is deputy managing editor at Foreign Policy. Before joining FP, he reported for the Christian Science Monitor, worked on corporate strategy for Atlantic Media, helped launch the Atlantic Wire, and covered international affairs for the site. A proud native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he studied European history at the University of Pennsylvania and has lived in Barcelona, Spain and Geneva, Switzerland. Twitter: @UriLF