Conventional wisdom would have it that The Rocky Horror Picture Show made the Midnight Movie. However, while there’s some truth to that, it’s also possible that that film ruined the Midnight Movie as well. After Rocky Horror‘s unprecedented second and third run success began in the late 70s, movie studios instantly began to copy it. Suddenly, “cult movies” weren’t found, they were processed.

Thanks to YouTube, the same thing is happening today to campaign ads. When you see a politician release a crappy ad, the sad fact is that there’s a good chance he did it on purpose.

Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina, and Linda McMahon ran three very expensive campaigns for office — but despite the massive amounts of money poured into their campaigns, none successfully won their race. Together, their campaigns cost a whopping combined total of $217 million — and a large chunk of each of their campaigns was self-financed. In the Daily Beast today, Gail Sheehy runs the numbers to explore what else could have been done with $217 million.

Carly Fiorina, California’s Republican Senate candidate, has been hospitalized. Fiorina, who has battled breast cancer, is reportedly being treated for an infection related to her recent reconstructive surgery. This is clearly troubling news that transcends the political battle that currently sees her within a few polling points of incumbent Barbara Boxer.

Republican consultant and ad expert Fred Davis has created some of the most memorable campaign ads of the last few years. He was the guy behind “Demon Sheep” earlier this year, as well as the ‘Obama Celebrity’ ad during the 2008 campaign.

He talked about his latest viral sensation, Christine O’Donnell‘s “I am not a witch” ad, on Parker Spitzer.

Today on Fox News Sunday Wallace got in a rather contentious back and forth with California Repubican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina over how exactly she would pay for the tax cuts she’s been touting. Suffice to say he was not satisfied with her talking points.

Sarah Palin made a fiery, near-prime time speech in California tonight to an excited crowd of Republicans.

California, of course, is home to two high profile ‘mama grizzly’ candidates, Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, who were not in attendance and were not mentioned by Palin. But she did have a lot to say.

Yesterday, Wolf Blitzer had Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) for a response to accusations from her opponent, Carly Fiorina, that she “has no experience in the real world creating jobs” and instead has spent her time “voting for more taxes.” Boxer disputed this, saying she’s voted for huge numbers of tax cuts throughout her career, but some of her numbers seemed off – and Blitzer, both rightly and wrongly, called her on it.

Carly Fiorina doesn’t like Barbara Boxer, and she doesn’t care who knows it. First, Fiorina released a bizarre, hallucinogenic, nearly 8-minute-long attack ad that portrayed Boxer, her opponent in California’s Senate race, as a kind of horror-movie monster. Next, the Republican Senate candidate openly mocked Boxer’s hairstyle, cattily calling it “soooo yesterday.” Now Fiorina has released a new, more sophisticated ad—one that still hinges on sneering at the Senatorial veteran.

After getting caught on a hot mic insulting political rival Barbara Boxer‘s hair, Carly Fiorina has spent the last few days tap-dancing around the remark. Today Chris Wallace gave her the opportunity to respond…and apologize, however Fiorina would only go so far as to say she “regretted this whole situation.”

A few days ago, California Republican Senate Candidate Carly Fiorina was caught on an open mic calling fellow GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman‘s decision to go on Hannity the day after her primary victory “bizarre” and calling Sean Hannity a “tough interview.” Last night, Fiorina went on the program herself to face the tough interviewer and say she’s sorry.

California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina had some explaining to do today after an off-air open mic caught her questioning fellow Republican Meg Whitman‘s decision to go on Hannity and making fun of opponent Sen. Barbara Boxer‘s hair. Last night she went straight to Greta van Susteren to explain herself: yes, she thinks Sean Hannity is a tough interviewer, and as for the hair issue? “It sort of goes with the territory.”

It’s been a while since we had an open mic moment, and the last one didn’t even make fun of anyone’s appearance. GOP Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, who won the nomination in her home state of California yesterday, visited local affiliate KXTV this morning to chat about her campaign. Not knowing the microphone was still on, Fiorina expressed some uneasiness about Sean Hannity and had a good laugh over opponent Sen. Barbara Boxer‘s hair.

Two potential 2012 GOP presidential nominees, and current Fox News employees, are in a very public disagreement when it comes to who best to represent the Republicans in the California Senate race (aka the “Demon Sheep” race).

Yes, Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee have made their CA Senate choices – and they’re on opposite sides of the primary.

The Shenandoah Valley Tea Party Patriots are now selling a deck of playing cards modeled after the Iraq War Most Wanted deck that was issued to soldiers to help them identify and capture members of Saddam Hussein‘s government. The Tea Party deck, however, features members of the US Congress whom they identify as part of the “progressive cancer,” along with some creepy marching orders. However, to use another Iraq War metaphor, it’s beginning to look like the Tea Party is in its last throes.

Sarah Palin received her first dose of Facebook backlash earlier this week when she endorsed Republican Senate Candidate Carly Fiorina over Tea Party favorite Chuck DeVore, with reports coming in that more than half of the comments on her post supporting Fiorina were negative and called Fiorina a “conservative in name only.” Yes, Keith Olbermann did use this as an excuse to play “Demon Sheep” again, and had Washington Post blogger David Weigel on the show to explain Palin’s thinking: “Fiorina is one of the only women in politics who gets made fun of as often as Palin does.”

Because portraying competitor Tom Campbell as some sort of laser-shooting evil sheep wasn’t weird enough, California Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina has now set her sights – and Terry Gilliam-wannabe ad guy Fred Davis III – on current Democratic Junior Senator Barbara Boxer. We don’t want to give too much away, but it is very, very weird.

Glenn Beck opened his show today with a quick review of two of last night’s most talked-about Super Bowl ads. Namely, Tim Tebow and Betty White. But the ad that really got under Beck’s skin was the $2.5 million Census advertisement paid for by the U.S. government. Money wasted!

The awesome Demon Sheep ad — put out by California senate seat seeker Carly Fiorina — left a lot of people wondering whether this was political genius at work, or just amateur ad-making that accidentally went viral. The answer appears to be genius. Is this the future of political advertising?

The Carly for California campaign has created an ad so weird, it would make Salvador Dali say “WTF?” It’s a negative attack aimed at Carly Fiorina‘s opponent, Tom Campbell, but if there’s any justice, it will now become the political equivalent of Star Wars Kid, or those “Hitler reacts” videos. Behold.

Where were you a year ago today? If you are a political journalist — or media hanger-on — chances are you were living out of a suitcase at the 2008 Presidential Conventions, with the Dems nominating Barack Obama in Denver and the GOP nominating John McCain in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Remember those heady days?