Going to get smacked...

Dem admakers poised to pounce on Carson, Fiorina

By Gabriel Debenedetti

Forget Donald Trump's jab at Rand Paul's appearance or Jeb Bush's weird low-five. For Democrats, the juicy stuff that will find its way into campaign ads after Wednesday's GOP debate features insurgents Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina on immigration and women's health.

That’s because the fleeting moments — when the retired neurosurgeon referred to a “spigot that dispenses all the goodies” to illegal immigrants, and when the former executive invoked fetus brains — are the kinds of lines that can make or break television ads attacking Republican candidates or their field more generally, Democrats said.

“Those moments stand out because they are the classic conundrum for a party pulled increasingly to the radical right in primaries,” explained veteran Democratic ad maker Eric Adelstein. “Pander red meat to the base that ends up alienating mainstream voters in the general election."

Fiorina, the only woman on stage, staked a claim to one of the night’s biggest moments when she challenged Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama to watch the undercover videos of Planned Parenthood — a group they have both strongly supported.

Donald Trump, and Jeb Bush had many tense moments during Wednesday's debate, but there were also some light moments, including when they slapped hands toward the end of the night.

But her full comments about defunding the group could alienate female voters, strategists said — particularly given that millions of women rely on Planned Parenthood.

“I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain,” she said. “If we will not stand up and force President Obama to veto this bill, shame on us."

For admakers, Fiorina's comments were matched only by those of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, said Adelstein. Cruz called the group an “ongoing criminal enterprise.” And the full Republican discussion on treatment of women was capped by Trump’s own claim that “I will take care of women. I respect women. I will take care of women."

On immigration, it was Carson who gave admakers something to work with.

“After we seal the borders, after we turn off the spigot that dispenses all the goodies so we don’t have people coming in here, including employment, that people who had a pristine record, we should consider allowing them to become guest workers, primarily in the agricultural sphere,” Carson said. “Because that’s the place where Americans don’t seem to want to work."

Lines like that feed into the Clinton campaign's ongoing argument that Trump’s immigration rhetoric reflects the party writ large. It’s a case Clinton has been making nonstop on the campaign trail, and Priorities USA, the main super PAC supporting her campaign, put out a web ad to that effect earlier in the summer.

The second GOP debate was a more sprawling event than the previous forum last month, when Democrats were most keen to take advantage of a pair of statements from Scott Walker and Marco Rubio outlining their abortion views. But this one also provided Democrats with more opportunities to highlight the generally chaotic nature of the GOP nominating contest

Also potential fodder for an ad: an argument between Jeb Bush and Trump about the real estate developer's casino dealings in Florida.

“He wanted casino gambling in Florida,” Bush said of Trump. “You wanted it, you totally did."

An obviously miffed Trump shot back: “I promise, if I wanted it, I woulda gotten it."

Not to be outdone, Bush tried to recount Trump’s attempt to expand gambling in the Florida. Trump quickly butt in: “Wrong."

“If I was a Democratic super PAC, I’d start playing the Trump/Jeb exchange in general election battleground states,” said Mo Elleithee, a veteran of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s 2008 campaign. That back-and-forth, he explained, could be used to show voters how raucous the Republican conversation has become.

Democrats will pore through the debate transcripts and video in the coming weeks to zero in on the exact moments they want to draw more attention to before the next round of debates.

But one pro-Clinton super PAC already got into the video game in the middle of the second-tier debate on Wednesday night. It took mere minutes for Correct the Record to distribute a four-second video of Lindsey Graham appearing to praise Clinton, when in reality he was making a broader argument about the need for Republicans to build a broader policy agenda.

To watchers of Correct the Record's brief clip, Graham’s message is clear. In his own words: “Hillary Clinton has a list a mile long to help the middle class."