Shortly after Obama’s first video for the campaign went up, Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor and potential GOP candidate for the 2012 presidential race, released a YouTube retort. The video (below), which has the urgent music of an action film, features Pawlenty responding to an Obama sound bite, by asking, “How can America win the future when we’re losing the present?” Pawlenty concludes, “In order for America to take a new direction, it’s going to take a new president.”
Since its release Monday, the video has gotten about 53,000 views, compared with 168,000 for Obama’s. Pawlenty also released the video on his Facebook Page, which has 81,000 fans. Obama has close to 19 million Facebook fans.
Meanwhile, another GOP hopeful, Mitt Romney, used his Twitter account yesterday to call out Obama: “@barackobama I look forward to hearing details on your jobs plan, as are 14m unemployed Americans.”
Otherwise, though, the leading Republican names bandied about for the 2012 presidential race -- Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich -- declined to respond via their Twitter or Facebook accounts to the Obama campaign launch. A video (below) by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, however, was designed to take the wind out of Obama’s sails. The video, a putative campaign ad for Obama, undercuts promises in his speech with images. For instance, the line “I will not rest,” appears as a picture of Obama golfing and fishing rolls by. That video has gotten more than 665,000 views since it was loaded on YouTube on March 31.