Free Republic

Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting Mitt Romney’s presidential candidacy, raised $7 million in January, topping off its deep reservoir of funds and allowing the group to flood media markets from Sioux City to Sarasota with some $14 million in advertising. Its FEC disclosure on Monday revealed that its extensive effort to elevate Romney and bury the competition relied on a set of donors that runs the gamut from famous heirs and CEOs to the most opaque and controversial kind of corporate interests. Unlike its competitors, Restore Our Future doesn’t have a lone high-profile benefactor, like Newt Gingrich has...

It’s not unusual for candidates to use leftover cash from aborted campaigns to form political action committees. But traditionally politicians have opted for so-called leadership PACs that allow them pay for political staff, travel the country and dole out contributions to favored candidates – all of which helps them keep themselves in the political spotlight and curry favor for potential future runs. Super PACs, which were spawned by a 2010 federal court ruling, could be used to maintain a political staff and fund a politician’s travel, but not to make donations to candidates. On the other hand – unlike leadership...

Atlantic Wire is reporting that the entity known as Occupy Wall Street is forming a Super PAC to accept unlimited donations and run political advocacy ads. The image above is the actual Federal Election Commission filing for Occupy Wall Street Political Action Committee (sans mask). "We're utterly serious," OWS Treasurer John Paul Thornton told Atlantic. Kudos to Atlantic reporter John Hudson for presumably asking the question, "are you guys serious?" The filing originates from Decatur, Alabama, where, according to the OWS offshoot’s Facebook page, this organization intends to raise money for progressive political candidates including Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren...

Via BuzzFeed. As expected, they’re going hard after his fiscal heresies. I’m giving you Santorum’s new ad here too, which is noteworthy first because he touts his tea-party cred (ironic) and second because he’s now making electability a core component of his pitch. No other Not Romney has been in that position before — but the numbers do back him up, for now: One thing that has remained constant in the ever changing GOP Presidential race is that Mitt Romney is the strongest candidate against Barack Obama…at least until now. PPP’s newest national poll finds Romney trailing Obama by 7...

As President Barack Obama tries to jump-start his SuperPAC, a close look at the numbers shows he needs more than a few rich men and women. He needs to create a nationwide base of rich supporters. A Register analysis of donations to the pro-Obama SuperPAC, Priorities USA Action, shows that 56 percent of its money, $2.3 million out of $4.17 million, came from California. An additional 25 percent came from Washington, DC, and 12 percent came from the president’s home base of Illinois. That’s 94 percent of the SuperPAC’s money from just two states and DC.

The White House didn't blow a dog whistle for deep-pocketed liberal donors on Monday. No, the administration whipped out a supersized vuvuzela. Blaring message: Let loose the campaign finance-bundling hounds of super PAC war! President Obama's campaign manager, Jim Messina, who served as White House deputy chief of staff for operations before assuming 2012 re-election duties, announced the super PAC super-flip-flop in a mass e-mail to supporters and a blog post published on the left-wing Huffington Post website. In a related conference call to major campaign finance bundlers, Messina encouraged these high-dollar donors to start funding Priorities USA Action. That's...

Two years ago President Barack Obama railed against a certain type of political action committee known as super PAC's as a "threat to our democracy". Today his reelection campaign confirmed that both administration and campaign officials will fundraise for Priorities USA Action, a super PAC backing the president. In October of 2010, shortly before the shellacking his fellow Democrats took in the mid-term elections, Mr. Obama spoke at a rally in Philadelphia. He attacked these groups which the Supreme Court ruled could raise unlimited sums from corporations, unions and other groups, as well as individuals. He implied they all had...

I’ll post the Nevada results later. Romney won big there in 2008 (51.1%) because of the heavy Mormon turnout at the caucuses and is expected to do so again. The big story was the revelation in The NY Times that the Romney campaign, both directly and through Jewish emissaries, has been trying to convince Sheldon Adelson to cut off further funding of a pro-Newt SuperPAC:

I heard this data read on Mark Levin yesterday afternoon, and picked it up from the CNN PoliticalTicker blog by way of Lucianne.I'll provide the nothing shy of jaw-dropping stats below... how you choose to absorb this ugly reality about election campaigns and negative advertising is, of course, completely up to you. Me? To use the "he who dies with the most toys..." old saying, paraphrased, obviously he who has the most money for a campaign, combined with the least scruples, wins. Statistics provided by the Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG). "I spent much of my academic career telling reporters,...

The list of contributors for Romney's PAC, RESTORE OUR FUTURE, INC., is shown in the referenced link. The total, as of this posting, is $17,947,952.77.

A political action committee which believes Barack Obama is not legally qualified for U.S. president plans a live broadcast of tomorrow’s hotly anticipated court hearing in Atlanta regarding Obama’s eligibility. The Article II Super PAC says it will provide uncensored, gavel-to-gavel video coverage of the event beginning at 9 a.m. Eastern at this online address. Based in Simi Valley, Calif., the PAC says it decided to act out of a sense of frustration, since most national news outlets have been ignoring the constitutional mandate that presidents be a “natural-born citizen,” which the PAC maintains is a person who is a...

New Ad by Gingrich Super-Pac

With contributions coming in, allies of Newt Gingrich have just purchased $6 million in advertising in Florida, to further build up the former House Speaker after his victory in South Carolina. The first ad labels Romney as "the inventor of government run health care" suggesting he is allied with President Obama. The ad is paid for by "Winning Our Future," a "super PAC" aligned with Gingrich. The organization has received $10 million in donations from one couple, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, who have backed Gingrich since they met him in 1995 when legislation important to Israel passed the House.

I normally don't post vanities, but I thought those outside FL would like to know what I am seeing here. I live near the Tampa area in FL, the Golden "I-4" corridor so to speak, which every candidate must win if they are to win any election. These mailings fill me with dread. How much money does this man have? And what is my mailbox going to look like by November? I'm probably going to have a couple of trees in there!

Four years ago, candidate Barack Obama reshaped the presidential campaign by raising more money from donors who gave less than $200 than any candidate in history. But analysts say the 2012 campaign will be dominated by wealthy corporations, unions and individuals who can anonymously spend as much as they want in favor of a candidate - thanks to how the Supreme Court decided the Citizens United case two years ago today. The decision gave birth to a new type of political action committee, the super PAC. As thousands of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators in San Francisco and elsewhere protested the...

One of the biggest headlines of the Republican primary race so far – and the point Stephen Colbert is trying to make with his satirical campaign – is the story of SuperPACs. ....................................................... On the campaign trail, we asked McCain about the ads from the SuperPAC that supports Romney. He told us these SuperPACs will “destroy the political process,” and predicted “scandal” because of them.

Newt Gingrich has called on the Super-PAC funding a series of ads critical of Mitt Romney's job creation record at Bain Capital to fix inaccuracies in the ads or remove them from the air. “I am calling for the Winning Our Future Super-PAC supporting me to either edit its “King of Bain” advertisement and movie to remove its inaccuracies, or to pull it off the air and off the internet entirely," Gingrich said in a statement released Friday. “Furthermore, I am once again calling on Governor Romney to issue a similar call for the Super-PAC supporting him to edit or...

Nearly all negative spending by super PACs in the presidential campaign over the past week has gone toward opposing Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who trailed badly in polls leading up to today’s New Hampshire primary, according to a WSJ analysis of expenditures reported to the Federal Election Commission. In total, anti-Gingrich super PAC Restore Our Future disclosed $89,962 in expenditures opposing Mr. Gingrich’s candidacy since the Jan. 3 caucuses in Iowa, where he came in fourth. That’s 96% of all negative spending in the past week by super PACs, the newest and most controversial form of political action...

Des Moines, Iowa -- Mitt Romney won the Iowa caucus with the help of an ominous new trend in politics called the "Tony Soprano strategy": Let your unnamed friends pummel your enemies while you keep your hands clean. The Iowa race was a national showcase for the power of a relatively new type of political action committee, known as super PACs, independent groups that are allowed unlimited donations from corporations and individuals. Such groups are going to continue to reshape the Republican race this year because federal election rules don't require them to reveal their donors until Jan. 31 -...

A political action committee which had planned to support Michele Bachmann's presidential campaign has very quietly defected to Mitt Romney — and it's spending big on his behalf. Citizens for a Working America, the so-called Super PAC which aired TV ads against a Democratic congressional candidate last year, had indicated earlier this year that it was backing the Minnesota congresswoman in the GOP nominating contest. But the group instead made a $475,000 Iowa ad buy on Christmas Eve in support of Romney, according to Federal Election Commission data published today. The so-called independent expenditure was listed as supporting Romney's candidacy,...