Every Step You Take, Every Move You Make
Every Step You Take, Every Move You Make
The Republican PAC that’s filming every single thing that key Democratic candidates do or say.
By David Weigel
“Go back and look at that Michelle Obama speech,” says Tim Miller. It’s Jan. 9, and the 32-year-old Republican strategist is perched in front of his Macbook Air, explaining how the first lady just hurt the Democrats’ candidate for an open Senate seat in West Virginia.
“I’m pulling it up. Okay. Here’s a great Charleston Daily Mail headline: ‘Michelle Obama backs Natalie Tennant in Senate race.’ ”
Miller laughs, because of course that’s a horrible headline. Nothing about it draws the reader in, or tells them what gaffes or toxic admissions might have happened when Obama arrived. The paper buried the ledes. “She talks about health care,” says Miller. “She talks about gun control. She talks about immigration. I don’t know if she mentioned Keystone, but even the EPA regulations—that was something Michelle Obama mentioned. If you’re any of these Democrat candidates running in red states, any of the issues I just mentioned is kryptonite.”
It’s Miller’s job to obsess about those details. He runs America Rising PAC, the Republican-aligned opposition research factory launched 10 months ago by Mitt Romney’s defeated campaign manager Matt Rhoades. After the election, the Republican National Committee researched and released an autopsy of the loss. The party needed, according to the RNC, was a group that did “nothing but post inappropriate Democrat utterances and act as a clearinghouse for information on Democrats.” Miller left the RNC to join the clearinghouse; As of last week, between the PAC and the LLC run by fellow oppo vet Joe Pounder, America Rising employed 47 more people, full or part-time.
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Inside Miller’s office, where he and Pounder are talking through the plans for 2014—they expect a budget of $10 million to $15 million, according to the Huffington Post—there’s a bookshelf with a copy of What A Party!, the chest-thumping, golf-game-reminiscing memoir by now-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe. It’s a memento of their first real loss. America Rising came up with one of the most theoretically damaging hits on McAuliffe, a promotional video for his troubled car company, GreenTech. The man who’d repeatedly talked about bringing a car company from China to America stood in Outer Mongolia, grinning about the 15 million square foot facility going up there. Neither Republican campaigns nor reporters had noticed it. America Rising found it buried on the GreenTech site. Other hits followed, all on this theme, but McAuliffe won anyway.
“McAuliffe was a better candidate, no doubt, than four years ago,” offers Miller. “He was on message. They knew their candidate’s weaknesses. He benefited by not being a new candidate—he goes off message and, oh, that’s just Terry, acting crazy! That’s just Terry, being folksy again. In 2013 a lot of the media felt that stuff had been asked and answered.”
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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/01/america_rising_the_republican_pac_that_s_filming_every_vulnerable_democratic.single.html
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