Tags
American Crossroads, Chamber of Commerce, Crossroads GPS, election ads, midterm elections, missouri, Political advertising, Robin Carnahan, Roy Blunt
Following up on an earlier report that connected money from foreign sources to Chamber of Commerce spending on behalf of GOP candidates in target states like Missouri, Think Progess today explores possible coordination between the ad buys of the Chamber and Carl Rove’s Crossroads GPS:
At every turn, from the operatives running the two organizations to their targeted races to their media firms, American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are bound to one another.
In Missouri, for instance, the seemingly “uncanny” coordination between their scheduling of ad buys insures that there will be always be a Chamber or Grossroads anti-Carnahan attack ad running:
Missouri
Crossroads GPS ads: 8/18-9/3
Chamber of Commerce ads: 9/3-9/8
American Crossroads ads begin: 09/15
Bear in mind that these two groups go to great lengths to conceal their donors, and that they account for over a fourth of the money that will be spent in this election by conservative interest groups. And it isn’t just TV ad buys. I’m sitting here as I write this looking at a glossy brochure put out by Crossroads proclaiming Robin Carnahan’s support for a “national energy tax.”
Sadly, if Congress magically decided to close the Pandora’s box opened by the Citizens United ruling, which now permits the GOP to launder donations through organizations like Chamber of Commerce; if a DOJ investigation found the Chamber guilty of violating laws that prohibit foreign entities from attempting to influence American elections; if if the (501(c)(4) tax status of organizations like Crossroads GPS were to be changed to that of a 527 political PAC (which it almost indisputably is) so that it would have to disclose its donors, all of this would happen too late to offset the unfair advantage these groups are giving the GOP in the upcoming election. For the time being we’ve got to suck it up and get on with it, no matter how badly the opposition is bending the law while working hand in hidden glove with each other and with the GOP.
It doesn’t bode well for the future – particularly if that future is is sullied by elephant crap in a GOP-controlled congress – that the Disclose Act, which would have insured some degree of transparency, couldn’t even make it though the Senate when that body has been, nominally at least, under the control of Democrats.
At any rate, there’s probably nothing to be done right now but get out and hustle our you-know-whats off. If we don’t, we’ll surely get’em handed to us on election day. We may anyway – and then it’s good bye to the good life in the old U.S. of A. for a good long while, at least for those of us who haven’t already got ours bigtime, like the richest 2% whom the GOP struggles to protect.
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