One of my favorite moments from the six Republican debates thus far came in May, when Mitt Romney tried to explain how he perceives threats to the U.S. from the Middle East: "This is about Shi'a and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate. They also probably want to bring down the United States of America."

The answer drew praise -- ABC News' The Note touted how impressive it was -- but Romney's take didn't make a lot of sense. Romney was articulating a national security strategy that conflates groups, sects, and agendas that have nothing to do with one another -- but he was saying it in such a way as to make it sound like he was informed.

It's exactly this kind of thinking that led to this ad, which may very well be the single dumbest campaign commercial of the year, at least so far.

It's a bit like the remarks from the debate in May -- Romney tries to come across as knowledgeable, but ends up not making any sense at all.

Glenn Greenwald recently explained that some portions of the conservative movement are genuinely convinced that we're this close to a global Islamic theocracy. It's absurd -- as Yglesias noted, "The idea that we should be laying awake at night afraid that a group of at most several thousand people who control almost no territory or valuable military equipment might establish a universal caliphate or 'collapse freedom loving nations like us' is ridiculous." And yet, that's the basis for a campaign ad from a top-tier Republican candidate.

Indeed, notice the ad talks about terrorists "collaps[ing] freedom-loving nations" like the U.S. How is that even possible? Romney doesn't say, but if we vote for him, he'll prevent it. Please.

And what does this have to do with Iran? Nothing, but Iran is in the Middle East, and when trying to sucker the far-right GOP base, that's all that matters.

As Kevin Drum noted, there's nothing serious about this style of campaigning: "There are no actual proposals or serious thoughts here. It's just a puerile contest to see who can stuff the most World War IV bullets into a single 30-second spot."