...The Supreme Court responsible for the 5-4 Citizens-United decision.
Even Obama realized that the election game can’t be played with two sets of rules.
Well, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, has been proven extremely wrong when he mouthed “not true” during the president’s 2010 State of the Union speech. Justice Alito was recorded making this very obvious silent gesture as the president railed against the Supreme Court’s Citizens-United decision The president was warning that it, “opens the floodgates for an unlimited amount of special interest money into our democracy.”
Sorry Justice Alito, President Obama -1 / Supreme Court - 0. But being the winner in this case may be just a very moot point.
Unfortunately, to emphasize the extent of Justice Alito’s incorrect statement of “not true”, the Wesleyan Media Project found that Political Action special interest groups, which underwrote only 3% of the campaign ads in the 2008 Republican nomination campaign. These same groups have thus far accounted for 44% of the ads in the 2012 race to date. And the election race has barely begun.
Two former White House aides, Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney, established the Obama-supporting Super PAC, Priorities USA, last year. However, with the president trying to stay away from Super PAC money, the Obama campaign had previously kept its distance, treating Priorities USA as if it had a communicable disease.
Unfortunately, Karl Rove’s Republican American Crossroads Super PAC has already raised $51 million, versus $20 million that has been raised for five Democratic groups combined. In 2011, American Crossroads had raised $19 million versus Priorities USA, $4.4 million.
With this latest financial campaign situation, President Obama has had no choice but to join in and encourage his supporter to throw in their contributions as well. This money, as with the Republicans, is raised by each groups’ nonprofit arms, of which neither group has to disclose their donors.
Therefore, the president’s campaign manager sent out an announcement last week in an e-mail headlined, “We Will Not Play by Two Sets of Rules.” The Obama campaign manager stated, “The Obama campaign has to face the reality of the law as it currently stands.”
As was expected, the Super PAC phenomenon has already, totally dominated the Republican primary campaign.
The Republican Super PAC's are going crazy in their primaries, but they also aren’t leaving out their going after president Obama.
One group, Americans for Prosperity, has aired nearly $6 million in negative ads aimed at President Obama. And Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, has already run another $3 million in negative ads against President Obama. Those and other groups are poised to unleash even more millions against Obama, once the general election campaign gets started.
Even Mitt Romney’s Super PAC raised $30 million in 2011. If he’s the general election nominee, those deep-pocketed donors will simply whip out their checkbooks and write another big one. And if Rick Santorum is able to pull-out the primary win, those Romney donors can just change the name on their checks to Santorum, since the donor’s names are not required to be disclosed.
The Citizens-United decision made this is a whole new election ball game, and with all of this available anonymous money, it is making everyone very nervous.
Based on what’s going on out there, if you were the Obama campaign manager, Jim Messina, you’d be nervous, too.
Copyright G.Ater 2012
Follow me on Twitter: gater01
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