It’s no time for change, says ad from Gingrich’s group 3

American Solutions for Winning the FutureThe people who brought you the “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” energy plan have launched a new TV ad opposing the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill, or, as the new 30-second spot calls it, the “national energy tax.”

American Solutions for Winning the Future, a group founded by former House speaker and Republican “ideas man” Newt Gingrich, will begin airing the ads on TV tomorrow. The ad shows the 1940 footage of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge twisting, heaving, and buckling in a windstorm, then collapsing.

“Factories closing… businesses failing… families hurting,” says the narrator. “Now Congress is about to make things dramatically worse by passing a new National Energy Tax.”

“We’ll lose more jobs, pay more for gas and electricity—pushing our economy to its breaking point.”

The ad doesn’t cite its sources for those dire conclusions. It’s probably not the Congressional Budget Office’s evaluation of the cap-and-trade portion of Waxman-Markey. That report concludes the bill would cost only about $175 per year per household, as Daniel Weiss writes. And it doesn’t include the bill’s other sections designed to further cushion consumers from higher energy prices.

The ad asks viewers to call their members of Congress and tell them to oppose the bill, which could receive a vote as early as this Friday. It fails to note, moreover, Gingrich’s own gigantic flip-flop on the climate issue (remember the Nancy and Newt ad?). (Update: Check out this fine “Gingrich vs. Gingrich” switcheroo chart on his changing philosophies from Media Matters.)

On the plus side, the Tacoma bridge footage is pretty cool. But the metaphor could use some reengineering—the message seems to be, “In these times when nothing is going right, it’s no time to start doing things differently.”

Watch the video:

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