GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) -- Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele on Monday unveiled fundraising ads that he said would help the GOP speak directly to sympathetic voters in targeted local markets and attract disaffected Democrats and independents.
Steele, who stopped in Greensboro to roll out the commercial, said Democratic leaders are running roughshod over what Americans want in their government.
He said Democrats have made things worse for Americans with their efforts at a health care overhaul and improving the economy, but they won't work in a bipartisan method as President Barack Obama said he would when he took office.
"This is an effort for us to communicate directly to the people of this community ... to take out the filter of the national media and the noise that comes with that," Steele told about 100 Republicans at a news conference. "I hear the same thing from people over and over again, 'They're not listening to me. They don't care."'
The ad will run for three weeks on Fox News Channel stations in Greensboro, Cincinnati, Tulsa, Okla., Oklahoma City and West Palm Beach, Fla., where Steele visited earlier Monday. It directs viewers to a new Web site or to call a number to make donations to the RNC's voter education and get-out-the-vote efforts in the midterm elections for the full slate of GOP candidates.
The Republican National Committee didn't immediately release its budget for running the ads.
"President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "are experimenting with America. Massive government expansion, government takeovers, redistribution of wealth and staggering debt to countries like China and the Middle East," Steele said in the ad. "Make them listen. Join us."
Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Joanne Peters said Steele is "doubling down on the RNC fear campaign" with the ad and shows "Republicans have no real ideas or agenda to help North Carolinians and are relying on scare tactics and fear mongering to raise money and defeat President Obama."
The ad release comes a week after a flap surfaced over a recent Power Point presentation to GOP fundraisers in Florida that included a direct call to exploit "extreme negative feelings" toward Democrats.
Steele has criticized the documents as inappropriate. The presentation portrayed President Obama is "The Joker," Nancy Pelosi as Cruella De Vil and Harry Reid as Scooby Doo. Steele said Monday he wanted an internal review of the matter by next week.
Steele told reporters the ad is not geared exclusively toward Republicans, but rather to attract people with the kinds of political philosophies that helped get presidents like Ronald Reagan elected. Steele acknowledged to fellow Republicans the GOP is now pulling itself "out of the ash heaps" of the 2006 and 2008 election cycles.
"We lost those very people who were no longer sympathetic to our message because our message had failed to live up to what we were saying about leadership," he said. "We are now in a position of correcting that."
Steele, who has a son attending nearby Elon University, said the party is focused on North Carolina after the Democrats won the state's electoral votes in 2008 for the first time since 1976. Democrat Kay Hagan upset Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole the same year, and now six Democrats are seeking to unseat GOP incumbent Richard Burr this year.
"We can't afford to lose races here in this state," Steele said. "It becomes more important ... to recapture our mojo in places where we've had strength in the past."
Steele also said it's "absolutely reasonable" for the GOP to take control of the U.S. House this year but the party hasn't determined all of the seats that would be targeted to eliminate the Democrats' 256-178 majority.
