May 15, 2008 04:20 PM UTC

Schaffer: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: For those feeling geographically challenged in the wake of this gaffe, the Rocky Mountain News has produced a helpful crib sheet explaining the (many) differences between Alaska’s Denali/Mt. McKinley and Colorado’s Pikes Peak. Should be required reading, unless of course you already know the difference (after the jump).

How bad can one little production mistake that someone really should have caught cost you?

For Senate candidate Bob “Pikes Peak, Alaska” Schaffer, the answer lies in this morning’s Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, Colorado Springs Gazette, and Grand Junction Sentinel. And let’s not forget the AP wire story filling in the smaller markets. Mt. McKinley (redundant note: doesn’t look anything like Pikes Peak) is known for its sudden avalanches, after all.

Even former GOP primary opponent Scott McInnis couldn’t resist weighing in, as the Sentinel reports:

Such mishaps tend to accumulate, said former 3rd Congressional District U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis, a Grand Junction Republican.

“They can afford this one, but one or two more and that’s all you can absorb,” he said.

McInnis added his response would be to put out a humorous, self-deprecating ad…

We actually think this experience has probably been self-deprecating enough. Every one of these articles has its own pithy way of retelling the punchline, and all of them make Schaffer look like an ignorant carpetbagger to whom “all mountains look the same.” For example, we didn’t actually know Schaffer was born and raised in Ohio (“Colorado is my life!”) until this flubbed ad gave the liberals a wide-open opportunity to point it out.

More or less the exact opposite of the message this otherwise well-produced (and costly) ad was supposed to convey, isn’t it?