American Crossroads Demonization Continues

Mike Allen reports at Politico:

DNC features Rove and Gillespie in an ad beginning a weeklong run on national cable tomorrow or Tuesday, with what an official calls "a decent buy": "Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie: They're Bush cronies. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce: They're shills for big business. And they're stealing our democracy. Spending millions from secret donors to elect Republicans to do their bidding in Congress. It appears they've even taken secret foreign money to influence our elections. It's incredible: Republicans benefiting from secret foreign money. Tell the Bush crowd and the Chamber of Commerce: Stop stealing our democracy. The Democratic National Committee is responsible for the content of this advertising." YouTube http://bit.ly/cQtHMv

--Gillespie tells Playbook: "The New York Times ... completely refuted the charge that the Chamber was funneling foreign money into U.S. campaigns. ... My group, the Republican State Leadership Committee [focusing on down-ballot races], discloses its donors, all 85,000 of them, all American. Those who benefited from $400 million in outside money in 2008 to help elect Barack Obama, much of it from undisclosed donors, have to come to terms with the fact that the playing field will be more even this year."

--From a Chamber statement on "foreign money": "AmChams are independent organizations, ... and they do not fund U.S. Chamber political programs. Collectively, AmChams pay nominal dues to the Chamber - approximately $100,000 total across all 115 AmChams. Under our budgeting system, the nominal funds received from AmChams and business councils are used to support our international programs. ... No foreign money is used to fund political activities."

--Think Progress graphic, "How The Chamber Gets Its Foreign Money" http://bit.ly/cGyfOa

--Jonathan Collegio, communications director for American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, in response to an earlier DNC release: "Ninety-five thousand Americans lost their jobs last month, $1.3 trillion was just added to the national debt, and Barack Obama and Tim Kaine are attempting to distract voters from those facts."