Link between President Barack Obama with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

A 65-second-long video titled “Obamaville”, which on the front presents bleak images of an America in dire economic and social straits, scenes of international unrest, and a prominent segment showing images of protests and violence in Iran also featuring pictures of Ahmadinejad.

The video was posted on the Santorum campaign’s YouTube page.

The issue of contention is that at the 40-second mark, an image of Ahmadinejad is shown on a small TV screen. And then for less than half a second, the picture flashes to a similarly framed picture of Obama before returning to the Iranian dictator.

Is Rick Santorum’s presidential campaign video subliminally linking President Barack Obama with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?  A million dollar question.

Santorum’s campaign manager, Michael Biundo, did not respond to a request on Friday night.

The ad which was also published on National Review Online, was touted as an exclusive “first look at Rick Santorum’s latest ad”.

“If Ahmadinejad gets a nuclear weapon, then we’re obviously going to deal with the fallout and coverage of that, all we’re going to be seeing is images of him and the president. We were trying to illustrate that.”  said Hogan Gidley, a Santorum spokesman, adding that it is “absurd”  to think the ad is liking Obama to Ahmadinejad.

The media consultant, who made the video, also denied there was an attempt to conflate Obama and Ahmadinejad.  According to Politico, John Brabender, the video is part of an eight-part web series that will run on the Santorum website in two weeks focusing on specific Obama policies.

Dylan Byers spotted this first and it really wasn’t too subtle.  When Rick Santorum’s “Obamaville” ad (set in a dystopian 2014) gets to foreign policy, it wars of a day when a “rogue nation and sworn American enemy has become a nuclear threat.”

One theory; This is Umbrage Bait, with the goal of bringing the Obama campaign into a discussion of how, no, it’s totally unfair to compare him to Iran’s quasi-elected president. An easy Santorum campaign riposte would be that the ad doesn’t compare them — the flash-flash is meant to show how Obama let the situation go pear-shaped.

With a precedence problem, where the confines of good taste have prevented previous campaigns from flash-cutting between George McGovern and Ho Chi Minh, or between Wendell Wilkie and Adolf Hitler; the possibility of a backfire is definitely there.