Karl Rove: He's Back, Big Time - Businessweek - 4 views
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Wynn’s preference for anonymity in such transactions posed no obstacle. That’s the whole idea behind Crossroads GPS.
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To maintain its supporters’ anonymity, a social welfare group like GPS must not have a “primary purpose” of a political nature, and it cannot coordinate strategy with candidates.
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The Democrat turned down public money, revealed himself to be a fundraising dervish, and outspent his opponent by nearly two-to-one.
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the Crossroads-led offensive is collectively poised to spend more than $1 billion on the 2012 elections, according to Republican operatives. That’s roughly twice—repeat: twice—what Democrats expect to spend by means of their super PACs and social welfare groups.
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some on the right “decided to create an enduring entity as a counterbalance.” Those entities are the Crossroads groups.
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Rove pitched his proposed startup as a more professional alternative, one built to have impact in 2010 but endure long beyond. “The business model of a consultant-driven, vendor-directed entity that hired itself increasingly lacked credibility with donors and was unsustainable,” Rove explains.
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“Conservative activists tend to act like six-year-olds on soccer teams,” he explains, “with everyone grouping around the ball and getting in each other’s way. Karl’s idea was that all of these organizations should share information, coordinate polling, reduce redundancy.”
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many of those who are squealing the loudest now [about Crossroads] are the same people who were mute when groups on the left were pioneering the use of 527s and 501(c)(4)s. … Liberals cheered then but are now quick to try and stop conservatives from using the techniques they used in the past.
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I was really interested by the section of the Conrad reading that dealt with campaign funding. This article details Karl Rove, one of the biggest names in political finance who has masterminded the Republican switch from "hard" (personal donations) to "soft" ("social welfare") funding. Many think of him as the man who kept Bush Jr. afloat for two terms, and now Romney has him in charge of funneling donations from massively wealthy, anonymous Republicans into a "social welfare organization" (to be spent on anti-Obama ads). Groups likes these on either side are part of what Rove refers to as the "unlimited-outside-money boom." While Republicans are not the only guilty party, I find it really disturbing that groups like American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS can be legally separate from the Romney campaign itself. This loophole encourages aggressive ads and a totally out-of-control budget - more than a billion dollars - during the campaigning. The advertising machine developed by the Romney campaign has twice the budget of Obama's: if he can't keep up, how could any less mainstream candidate even hope to? This article makes a really strong case for limiting spending. Rove makes a point about keeping the parties themselves stronger, but it was not enough to sell the idea to me. The grimmest part is the story of one-upping Rove gives: he created Crossroads as a response to Obama's doubling of the Republican budget in the last race, pointing out that this cycle could continue.
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One of the ideas that stuck with me the most after reading this article about an issue that is certainly controversial, but somewhat unavoidable, was the quote you also brought up, which is that Karl Rove is invested in "[solidifying] Republican control in Washington, not subvert[ing] the party system." This paradox is really fascinating and seems masked by subtlety. By strengthening and giving great power to the Republican party, both in Congress and through the President, I would assume that the party system would be thoroughly changed. Even though a Democrat could run for the next term, if Rove is right in saying that this new way of campaign financing and organizing is cyclical, it seems like "Republican control in Washington" could turn into a more lasting situation. But because this article addressed the growing Democratic campaign financing world, which I have always struggled to learn more about, it is difficult to say if the growth of Republican resources would really change anything. If Democrats soon catch up in terms of their financial abilities and "receive unlimited, undisclosed contributions from industrialists, financiers, and other loaded insiders," then wouldn't it just elevate the scale of presidential campaigning, and the classic dynamics of the race would remain the same?
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This article's description of Karl Rove's 501c4, which is supposed to be a non-profit, social welfare agency sharing offices with his 527 super-pac is very disturbing. It seems that it should be breaking some law that they share executives, employees, consultants, etc. The definition of "social welfare" in politics is a very slippery idea. So much has been made of the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision's effect on the Repulblican's ability to raise huge amounts of money, I had no idea that the Democrats had been doing the same thing for a long time. The article refers to a book by Brendan Doherty, The Rise of the President's Permanent Campaign. The title itself exposes a sad truth about our political system. It never seems to end. It is wrong that all this money floods into "social welfare" agencies to research and pay for endless political ads when there is so much real work to be done to help real people. I can't help but wonder whether we can consider a system like France where politicians can only campaign for a short period of time or whether we should have a law that a president can only serve one six year term. He can then work on his agenda instead of always thinking about the next election.
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I found this really interesting, especially being in the campaign finance small group for the presentation. The article does a good job describing the confusing nuances of 501s and 527s (superpacs and social welfare groups), but what I found the most interesting was the discussion of Obama's vilification of the Citizens United decision. The decision definitely hurt the Democratic party and gave the Republicans an advantage in the world of campaign finance, and this article seems to accuse Obama of deliberately misrepresenting the decision to make it seem worse than it was.
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The part that stuck out to me in this article was when Rove tried to act as if unions and corporations should have the same rights. Unions represent large groups of people working for companies (i.e. the United Auto Workers). The people in these unions are generally blue-collar, working class people. Corporations on the other hand are all about making money. To me, it seems much more fair for unions to be able to run politically driven ads than corporations, but I'm not sure how that would work legally.