Update: In wake of Super Tuesday, ad wars intensify (The Continuation of Vetting Santorum)

cnn ^ | March 7, 2012; 2 hours ago | CNN Senior Producer Kevin Bohn

[Red Steel]

Atlanta (CNN) - With the recognition that Super Tuesday did not deliver a knock-out punch for Mitt Romney and that the Republican primary contest is expected to continue for the foreseeable future, the super PAC supporting Romney's bid has bought almost $1.4 million worth of ads in states that don't vote until the end of March.

The group told CNN it has purchased $937,000 worth of air time in Illinois, which votes on March 20 and $451,000 for commercials in Louisiana, which holds its primary on March 24.

With much of the political world's attention now focused on Alabama and Mississippi, which vote next week, the super PACs supporting Romney and Newt Gingrich are engaged in a multi-million dollar ad war in those two states.

Taking advantage of its major cash advantage, Restore Our Future has bought more than $2 million in Alabama and Mississippi in broadcast and cable time through the primaries,...is running a combination of ads criticizing both Santorum and Gingrich

-snip-

Romney's campaign just weighed in with a $165,000 buy for broadcast ads in Alabama. Gingrich's campaign just bought $20,000 of cable time in Alabama and Mississippi.

The super PAC pushing Romney also is aiming its fire at Santorum in several mailers sent to Alabama voters.

In one obtained by CNN, the pro-Romney Restore Our Future attacks Rick Santorum for "Typical behavior from a real Washington insider."

The mailer reads: "Like Most D.C. insiders Rick Santorum has a problem. He puts his interests ahead of ours!" The flier specifically criticizes Santorum for voting for a bill allowing felons to vote.

-snip-

The other side of the pamphlet shows a sign saying "Vote here" with the word "felons" written above it and next to it. It states: "Rick Santorum voted with Hillary Clinton to allow felons

[Red Steel]

I thought you were talking about the lying personal attacks against Gingrich. ... If someone ran an ad pointing out that Gingrich made a commercial with Nancy Pelosi, that would also be negative, but wouldn’t be a false personal attack.

I was talking about lying attacks against Newt in post #6 from Mittens, and I answered your question in post 14 about Santo who first ran negative ads against Newt way before Newt even thought about running negative ads against Santo.

I thought the objection about “negative ads in Florida” was about how Santorum wasn’t trying to win Florida, and so shouldn’t have been attacking Gingrich there. That’s why I made the point that Santorum didn’t run ads or robocalls in Florida.

I corrected myself stating that Santorum ran his first negative ad against Gingrich a day after ("One day off") the Florida Primary on February 1st.

A sample of lies told by Romney to take down Gingrich. Below is part of a nine page letter that the Gingrich Campaign sent to southern state newspapers. Pages seven and eight:

[darrellmaurina]

Thank you for posting this link to line-by-line rebuttals of anti-Gingrich ads. This is what the campaigns need to be doing, in detail, and on the internet.

The Romney campaign and the independently funded pro-Romney SuperPAC have tens of millions of dollars to run negatives ads against Romney's opponents. That's unavoidable, and without tens of millions of dollars to rebut the ads there may be nothing that can be done to reach the people who make their decisions about candidates based mostly on TV ads.

What **CAN** be done, and done relatively inexpensively, is for Romney's opponents to put up detailed refutations on the internet. Unlike the way things were a couple of campaign seasons ago when most people had to rely on the mass media for information about candidates, people who are seriously interested in finding out the details of an accusation are now able to go on the internet to check it out.

That is a **MASSIVE** aid to underfunded candidates, especially because people who have taken the time to do the research on their own will often get angry and start telling other people that Romney's campaign has either outright lied or (more likely) misrepresented the facts.