The Royal Treatment

People don’t want their rats meek and subliminal. They want them grand, maraud ing, glutton ous—scaling tall buildings, if possible. That’s the lesson learned from Republican challenger Sonny Perdue’s video master piece in the Georgia governor’s race. Where Repub licans fell in 2000 with “Rats,” Perdue rises with a campy, Godzilla-esque parable about Democrat Roy Barnes’ “shifty and crafty” performance as governor. “As the power coursed through his veins, King Roy Barnes made promises upon promises, and kept hardly a one,” a narrator says as a huge rodent with a “King Roy” necklace gorges himself in the governor’s mansion, lumbers through Atlanta’s traffic-clogged streets, climbs buildings and drags his sag ging tail to the state capitol to give its golden dome a big smooch.

The video—running on VoteSonny.com