Oh, look out, folks: Randy Brock 2.0 is here. Yes, the putative Republican gubernatorial nominee has finally, finally, FINALLY rid the Internet of his first campaign website, an embarrassing hotchpotch of stock photos, recycled material, uncorrected typos, a dearth of material, and sadly infrequent updates.

The new website is slick and professionally designed. But it’s just about as content-free as the original.  It’s obviously straight out of a campaign consultant’s basic toolkit. “Hey, we need a website for Randy Brock.” “All right… let’s see, he’s from Vermont, right? We need something outdoorsy. Maybe template number 24-B, with the fuzzy landscape photo in the background. And plug in that “bears in the woods” ad on the front page — might as well get as much mileage out of that as we can.”

A prefab website. Goes with his prefab stump speech as delivered at Saturday’s state Republican convention. The one where he called Peter Shumlin the most liberal Governor in Vermont history. I suspect that every Republican challenger to a Democratic incumbent will trot out the following Mad Lib: “(Name of Democrat) is the most liberal (name of office held by Democrat) in history!”

And it goes with his prefab new 30-second campaign ad, “Character.” It’s 30 seconds of faux-Ken Burns noble string music with artfully-employed photos and stock footage, just like every other introduce-the-candidate campaign ad in the country. Your eyes are guaranteed to glaze over by the tenth second. Afterward, you might vaguely recall seeing some sort of campaignish ad, but I bet you dollars to donuts you won’t remember who the candidate was.

Folks, welcome to the Spampaign, a 100% potted political product bearing no resemblance to any known animal or vegetable material. I don’t know how much Randy is paying his well-known out-of-state consultants, but whatever it is, he’s getting ripped off. They’ve obviously outfitted his campaign with off-the-rack material, scarcely modified at all to suit Brock’s personality or policy stances or the unique nature of Vermont.  

Let’s go back to the website. Yes, it’s slick-looking, but the content is just sad. The Brock bio looks like it was written by committee, or possibly generated by a computer program. It begins with the stirring paragraph…

Randy Brock, the 2012 Republican candidate for Governor of the State of Vermont, served as Vermont’s 28th State Auditor. The State Auditor is one of Vermont’s five statewide Constitutional Officers. He currently is in his second term as a member of the Vermont State Senate.

Really gets the blood pumping, doesn’t it? And the Brock “issues” page is full of Republican S.O.S. Cut regulations, end Shumlin’s health care reform, “challenge the educational establishment” (hint, hint: unions!), cut “pie in the sky” renewable energy plans, get that $21 million from CVPS, and this little gem:

Simplify the tax code and even the load by making sure everyone pays at least something.

In other words, raise taxes on the working poor. Brilliant!

I don’t know why the VTGOP insists on following the national Republican playbook to the letter, when it’s clearly out of step with Vermont politics. Poverty of imagination? Over-reliance on those out-of-state consultants? Or maybe Limbaugh Poisoning: they’ve ingested so much claptrap from the right-wing media that they can no longer think in any other terms. Kinda makes it tough to appeal to moderates and independents.

Brock’s “Events” page is even sadder. The next event listed is a Meet & Greet at somebody’s house on June 5. June freakin’ fifth! More than two weeks from now! This campaign’s off to a hot start, isn’t it?

There are two other Meet & Greets later in June, and that’s all. Wow.

As for the rest of Brock’s online campaign, it’s still embarrassingly tiny. He’s up to 160 Facebook friends. The four most recent “Posts by Others” include two from this past weekend, one from May 10 (“Are you related to Jim Brock of Bermuda and Quechee, VT?”), and one from April 30.

And Randy has yet to master the Art of the Tweet. He’s only written 16 Tweets in his one month on Twitter, and he has a whopping 60 Followers.

There you have it: Brock 2.0, the Spampaign. Contains no natural ingredients or nutrients; guaranteed 100% completely artificial.