Does Super Tuesday = Super Branding?

Super (aka—very good; pleasant; excellent; extreme; huge; superficial)This Super Tuesday is "make it or break" for the Republican primary candidates. With elections in 10 states across the country they've pulled out all the stops and there's been a huge surge in branding for each of them.The budgets are definitely super — the ad spending alone has nearly topped $10 million with Romney having the most "super" budget with more than half that total coming from the Mitt Romney-backing Restore Our Future. (Read more about ad spending here.)But what about the design side of branding these candidates? Is it super, or superficial?Branding experts Steven Heller (author of Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State,) Debbie Millman (Sterling Brands, President Design Group), and Alice Twemlow (Design Critic) shared their thoughts on a School of Visual Arts Brief last month. All three offer humorous observations, especially Twemlow's comparison of the swash in Newt's logo to a slimy salamandar. Twemlow also remarks that the further right you get, the less care seems to have been taken with the visual presentation of a candidate’s image, with Santorum's logo looking like it could have been created by a DIY business card machine. (Read the full article here.)What do you think? Were the super budgets spent on super branding?Sources:http://jump.dexigner.com/news/24605http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/04/2674789/super-tuesday-ad-spending-nearly.htmlhttp://dictionary.reference.com/browse/super-