According to the President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, the president has been the target of negative ads from outside groups totaling tens of millions of dollars - even before the first voting in the Republican primary has begun.
By their tally, outside groups like Crossroads GPS, Americans for Prosperity, the Republican National Committee, Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama, and the Coalition for American Jobs have spent $16.6 million dollars on anti-Obama ads nationwide. These groups have spent $1.5 million on anti-Obama ads in Iowa alone, according to Obama’s campaign.
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Scaring donors with the specter of competing against the GOP and its supporting PACs could also be an effective fundraising tool for team Obama. The PACs include the Karl Rove-founded American Crossroads, and Americans for Prosperity, financed by the Koch brothers.
Indeed, in email and video (below), the campaign has already started ramping up concern about GOP spending and tamping down speculation that it would raise a billion dollars. The report continues:
Jonathan Collegio, communications director for GOP SuperPAC American Crossroads says "Outside groups on the right like American Crossroads are trying to balance out the completely dominant position that Big Labor has had in American elections since the 1930s."
He says labor unions spent $400 million on the 2008 election according to the New York Times and of the top five outside spending groups in the 2010 election cycle three were labor unions, according to the Wall Street Journal. Collegio insists, the Obama aides are "purposefully ignoring the fact that Big Labor will spend at least a half a billion to elect Obama and the Democrats in 2012."
Fundraising email from Obama manager Jim Messina:
I want to set the record straight on one thing before our fundraising deadline on Saturday:
You may have heard chatter from the other side about the President's so-called "billion-dollar war chest." When they say that, they're intentionally doing two things:
1.) Because they know that kind of sum turns people off from politics, they're misleading you. We do not and will not have a billion-dollar war chest.Obama campaign video:
2.) They're trying to make you think your support doesn't matter to the President. What kind of difference does $3 or $10 make to a billion-dollar campaign?
