Bush Surrogates Raise Nearly $250 Million to Smear Dem Nominee

Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report at 3:15 PM on January 21, 2008.

When looking ahead to November, one of the advantages Democrats enjoy over Republicans is financial -- for the first time in modern political history, Dems are raising quite a bit more money than Republicans. The DCCC, for example, already has $31 million on hand for the cycle, while the NRCC has less than $3 million.

Great news, right? Well, yes, except "independent" right-wing entities are going to pick up the slack -- and then some. Out in front will be our old friends at Freedom's Watch.

When a group of former White House aides formed a political advocacy group called Freedom's Watch last summer, its initial wave of ads featured battered Iraq war veterans pleading for support for President Bush's "surge" of troops.

Last month, the theme changed dramatically as the same group splashed dark, grainy images of illegal immigrants across television screens in northern Ohio, attacking a Democratic candidate's position on the divisive domestic issue.

Freedom's Watch has loudly announced that there will be no limits to what it might do.... While initial reports suggested a budget of $200 million, people who have talked to the group in recent weeks say the figure is closer to $250 million, more than double the amount spent by the largest independent liberal groups in the 2004 election cycle.

The "no limits" phrase probably wasn't intended this way, but it has two meanings. First, with a quarter-billion dollars, Freedom's Watch will be able to do what it pleases. Second, driven by contemporary Republican norms, the range of Freedom's Watch attacks with know "no limits," because they're unlikely to be concerned about pesky details (like decency and accuracy).

Let's not brush past the group's $250 million budget too quickly. There's simply no precedent for an independent political operation to have that kind of money. In 2004, MoveOn.org, which was extremely active, spent $21 million. The Swift Boat liars spent $22 million. Harold Ickes' Media Fund spent in upwards of $100 million. Freedom's Watch is preparing to spend a quarter-billion dollars in just one campaign cycle.

I should note that the WaPo's headline pointed to the group as "a conservative answer to MoveOn." That seems a little silly.

Wes Boyd, who co-founded MoveOn.org with his wife in their home in Berkeley, Calif., said the two groups are fundamentally different because his liberal organization was set up outside the influence of Democratic Party operatives and is funded primarily by small-dollar donors around the country.

Freedom's Watch, on the other hand, is "doing attack ads by Beltway operatives, financed by billionaires, at the request of the White House," Boyd said by e-mail. "MoveOn helps millions of real people get engaged and be heard and is solely funded by these same people."

That's absolutely right, but it may not matter. With a $250 million budget, Freedom's Watch will be able to pull the wool over the eyes of quite a few people, whether it's top-down or bottom-up.

It's already starting to work.

The aggressively negative anti-illegal-immigration ads that ran during the Ohio special election race strayed far from Middle East policy, but the ad campaign -- like the group itself -- was bankrolled largely by Sheldon G. Adelson, a Las Vegas casino executive who last year pledged an unprecedented $200 million to Jewish and Israeli causes.

Adelson personally wrote an $80,000 check to Freedom's Watch on Dec. 7, according to Federal Election Commission documents, just four days before the election that gave Republican Robert Latta the House seat representing the district around Bowling Green. Behind a blood-red foreground, the group's ad showed Latinos hurrying under fences and being frisked by police as a narrator accused Democratic candidate Robin Weirauch and "liberals in Congress" of supporting free health care for illegal immigrants.

Fleischer said the turn toward the immigration issue should not have been a surprise.

"To us it wasn't a broadening" of the mission, he said. "We said prosperity through free enterprise and domestic issues were going to be on the agenda. But something had to come first, and what came first was the 'surge' and the president's policies in Iraq."

Fleischer cautioned that the scope of the group's involvement in the 2008 elections has not been decided. But the roughly $100,000 ad campaign in Ohio is a good indication.

After Latta won, the DCCC chairman, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), issued a memo warning fellow Democrats about the new independent group gunning for them. Van Hollen's campaign committee has $31 million, compared with $2.3 million for the Republicans' committee, but he is deeply concerned that independent groups on the right are now engaged in congressional races while liberal groups are focused on the presidential race.

When it comes to political money, "there's a whole other universe out there," Van Hollen said he told Democrats. "Don't get lulled into a false sense of security."

Good advice.

Tagged as: conservatives, freedom's watch

Steve Benen is a freelance writer/researcher and creator of The Carpetbagger Report. In addition, he is the lead editor of Salon.com's Blog Report, and has been a contributor to Talking Points Memo, Washington Monthly, Crooks & Liars, The American Prospect, and the Guardian.