The American Spectator

As I wrote here shortly after it aired on Sunday night, I really liked the Clint Eastwood Chrysler Super Bowl ad and said it was the only ad worth remembering.

Well, it may very well be the most remembered Super Bowl ad of all time. However, a lot of conservatives weren’t so receptive. Karl Rove was “offended” by the ad. Over at NRO, Christian Schneider claimed the ad was nothing more than “a few vacuous bromides, masquerading as profundity” and for good measure reminded everyone that Eastwood had fathered five children with seven different women. Geoffery Norman at The Weekly Standard was a little more tactful but no less direct. “The ad was about politics, not cars,” writes Norman, “and it was an endorsement of bailouts, not hard work and grit.”

For his part, the 81-year old actor and director insists he is not affiliated with President Obama.

I think conservatives are not only shooting the messenger but they don’t get the message.

I never took the ad as an endorsement of President Obama. Rather I took it as a tribute to America’s resilience and can do spirit. I particularly liked the line, “We find a way through tough times and if we can’t find a way, we’ll make one.”

Frankly, the only reason that Karl Rove is “offended” is because he wished he had put out an ad like that. That ad said more in two minutes than not only what the Republican candidates have had to say in the past six months but also more than what President Obama has had to say in three years in office. But if Rove and other conservatives are going throw a fit over this then the Obama Administration would be foolish not to embrace this commercial.

As for Eastwood, he sounds positively Reaganesque. But I wouldn’t expect less from a man who understands not only the medium of film and television but the meaning of words especially when used sparsely. If Mitt Romney had narrated these lines, they would have gone in one ear and out the other.

Not all conservatives are attacking Eastwood. Here’s a defense of Eastwood by Mark Levin.