GOP Attack Group Raising $250 Million F/Congressional Races In 08. We May Lose Congress

[KittyWampus]

Other DU'ers have posted info about Freedom Watch before. It doesn't hurt to shine a light on them as often as possible.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/005103.php

Today's Must Read
By Paul Kiel - January 21, 2008, 9:46AM

We spent a good deal of time in the 2006 elections tracking the activity of third party groups on the right, groups with anonymous names like the Economic Freedom Fund. Funded by the most part by millionaire home-builder (and former Swift Boat patron) Bob Perry, the groups swooped in to attack Dem candidates throughout the country, airing radio, TV, and print ads and calling hundreds of thousands of voters with push polls.

But Perry only gave about $9 million to such groups that year. Freedom's Watch, with its close White House connections and network of Bob Perrys, is a whole new breed.

The group aims to raise and spend approximately $250 million for the 2008 cycle, a vast amount of money they apparently plan to use not only on the presidential election, but to greater effect in numerous House and Senate races throughout the country, where six figures can go a long way.

To review the White House connections: the group is headed by Bradley Blakeman, a former Bush White House official, Mel Sembler, a millionaire former Bush admbassador to Italy, and Ari Fleischer, who serves as the group's spokesman. Much of its support so far has come from Sembler and casino magnate and billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the sixth richest person in the world. (The group intends to "broaden its base" as time goes on, Fleischer says.) The group got off the ground with a $15 million effort to support the president's surge strategy in August, but it's sticking around for the long haul.

snip absurd Washington Post headline calling Freedom Watch "A Conservative Answer to MoveOn" after which Wes Boyd debunks that silly notion.

Adelson personally wrote an $80,000 check to Freedom's Watch on Dec. 7... 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....
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."

[HeraldSquare212]

1. They should keep dreaming - they'll never raise that amount. nt

[DS1]

3. it would be unlikely

all the Bush "Rangers, and Pioneers" and other puketastic cowboy jerkoff titled people will be facing a difficult time.

[KittyWampus]

5. Don't you think there's a lot of money that has been and needs to be laundered

that can go into this group?

[EFerrari]

4. Yes, they will. This is a PNAC front group, not grassroots. n/t

[KittyWampus]

6. All the billions of dollars of our taxpayer dollars gone missing didn't just go to buy

gold shorts and matching clubs in every color.

So I think it's possible.

[EFerrari]

9. It these crooks pu half of their scamming energy into running

the government instead of into ruining the country, who knows where we could be right now. Housing, healhcare, education -- we could be Sweden!

[Winterblues]

8. May not matter. Enough Liberals are so upset they may not even vote.

Democrats think they have us by the short hairs and can do or not do anything they please. I may not vote at all if they are an example of what I would be voting for..

[KittyWampus]

2. Cutting Pasting Comments From TPMuckracker about this group and its actors

Helpknot wrote on January 21, 2008 10:33 AM:
Of course it should be noted that so far in this election cycle, Sembler and his family have all donated exclusively to the Romney campaign, according to fundrace.

The Sembler Company made and continues to make its money off the creation and management of retail properties incluuding that mainstay of the American Dream, the stripmall.

Sembler's wife, Betty, is an active Drug Warrior who has made no bones about broadcasting her long held belief that pot smokers are funding terrorists.

The two of them were instrumental in founding a chain of private and allegedly non-profit teen drug abuse treatment centers, Straight Inc., which were forced to shut their doors in 1993 after years of allegations of severe abuse and the use of highly questionable treatment modalities that appeared to be based on those used in Synanon, a highly abusive and destructive cult.

Mel was not only the US Ambassador to Italy under the current President Bush, but also served as Ambassador to Australia under the first President Bush.

He served as a fundraising chair for the Scooter Libby Defense Fund, and serves as a national finance co-chair for Mitt Romney.

[jojo54]

7. I've always know that repukes are the sneakiest, slimiest

people in the world but IMHO, most people in this country are sick and tired of the mud slinging and lies generated by attack groups. Maybe it's just hopes & dreams, but I don't think as many will fall for the grand scheme this time.