Every American attack ad is built from the same kit: an alarm word, a national villain, a state used as a dystopia, and a closing fear line. Swap the thesaurus and the ad runs just as well in the other direction. What follows is the kit, mirrored.
The mirrored vocabulary
| Conservative ad phrase | Liberal mirror phrase |
|---|---|
| radical liberal | MAGA extremist |
| California values | Florida agenda / Mar-a-Lago values |
| woke agenda | culture-war agenda |
| socialist | authoritarian |
| open borders | abortion-ban politics |
| defund the police | defund public schools |
| indoctrination | book-banner / classroom censor |
| coastal elites | billionaire donors / dark-money network |
| Pelosi / AOC / the Squad | Project 2025 / Mar-a-Lago / the gun lobby |
| soft on crime | soft on corruption |
| too liberal for us | too extreme for us |
The formula
Strip the party labels off and the machine has five moving parts:
1. Attach an alarm word to every noun: "extreme," "MAGA," "dark-money," "Project 2025," "book-banning," "abortion-ban."
2. Tie the local opponent to a national figure or movement.
3. Use one state as a policy-dystopia shorthand.
4. Translate every issue into personal stakes: schools, doctors, paychecks, privacy, safety, and local control.
5. Close with the standard fear line: "Too extreme for [state]."
That is the entire playbook. The vocabulary is a skin; the skeleton never changes. You can verify this yourself on the Machine — build an ad, press "Flip the party," and watch every beat survive the swap.
The sample spot
Grainy black-and-white footage. A candidate shakes hands at a rally.
Narrator: "MAGA extremist Jim Smith says he will stand up for Ohio. But Smith took dark-money cash, backed abortion-ban politics, and voted with the same Project 2025 crowd pushing book bans and cuts to public schools.
Now Smith wants to bring the Florida agenda here: politicians in doctors' offices, censors in classrooms, and billionaires writing the rules.
Jim Smith. Too extreme. Too MAGA. Too Florida for Ohio."
Cut to black.
Narrator: "Paid for by People Who Also Own a Thesaurus."
You can watch this exact spot, produced with all the gravitas it deserves, on The Ad page.