Or, in this case, "I am not a liar".
Remember, don't think of an elephant?
Saying that Palin is not a liar elicits the 'liar' frame together with her name. Mentioning her name and the word "lying" in the same sentence reminds people she is lying.
When Nixon said he was not a crook, everyone thought of him as a crook. Inserting the word "not" means nothing - that is not how a human mind works.
So, did they lose their framing magic?
Which is the same reason that Obama's ad "Not maverick" has the unintended opposite effect - reminds people that McCain is supposed to be a maverick:
Come on, guys, get your framing mojo right!
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You would think that they would have hired people that knew this already. What are they spending money on again? This reaffirms the fact that I am not missing out by not having a television. There is nothing good on TV.
Wish they'd just put up the "votes with Bush 90% of the time" and the words "batshit insane liars" in subliminally-impacting flashes rather than waste 30second spots repeating stale words.
TV is a waste of time. If something important happens on TV, I know a blogger somewhere will post a video clip of it. But this also means I am out of touch with what regular folks see every day and may thus mismeasure the effectiveness of TV drivel on voter behavior.
I heard yesterday on NPR an extended interview with 13 "average" people from York, PA. (I'm paraphrasing here...) One lady said that she knows Obama is a Muslim. Response: But he says that he is not a Muslim and never was. Lady: Yes, but Muslims are all liars, and that's exactly what he would say. I can't trust him because he is a Muslim and a liar.
This fits in exactly with what you are saying. When a person's mind is made up, anything that anyone says that contradicts those beliefs is a lie.
Simply amazing. And scary.
"How disrespectful"? Boo hoo. That makes Palin look weak.
Have you seen that lame '1982' ad by Biden-Obama? Will people associate big obsolete cell phones with McCain?
Campaign ads this year have been a parade of vacuousness.
@Scott
If we believe what Coturnix is saying, the problem is not that people are amazingly convinced of lies. The problem is the NPR response. It should have been "But what about his attendance at Church?" Or "what about his Christianity?"
For the record: Google gives ~9 million hits for Obama + Muslim but ~20 million for Obama + Christian (that said, the first few hits on the later are pretty lousy).