Are American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS comparable to labor unions and MoveOn.org? Democratic activists scoff at the question. But Steven Law, Crossroads' CEO, says yes.
"American Crossroads was conceived as an answer to the hundreds of millions of dollars that unions and MoveOn.org and other groups on the left have been spending for years to support Democrats," Law said.
"So we started American Crossroads because we thought there ought to be a way for us to try and level the playing field."
Adam Ruben, political director for Moveon.org, says it's a fundamentally different approach to political engagement. ...
Labor union representatives argue that the two Crossroads groups spend their money overwhelmingly on ads, not on get-out-the-vote efforts and advocating for safer work environments, which, union representatives argue, enhance democracy. Representatives from Crossroads say they are experimenting with new ways to get out the vote online and through technology but acknowledge that it doesn't approach the boots-on-the-ground power the unions have. GPS also spends money supporting other groups that share its less-regulation/lower-tax agenda, which they believe also contributes to society but from a different political perspective.
There was only one question going into Thursday night's Republican debate in Jacksonville, Fla.: Would Newt Gingrich win, or would he lose?
He lost. And even worse for Gingrich, Mitt Romney won.
Anything less than the type of bring-down-the-house blowout that's kept Gingrich's candidacy afloat would have been a disappointment, and Gingrich fell far short of the mark he'd set for himself.
Romney got Gingrich off-balance from the start by stealing two of the former speaker's favorite tricks: feigned offense and getting the crowd riled up.
Even with the sound turned off, Romney would have stolen Newt Gingrich's debate thunder with a surprisingly commanding and aggressive performance in the latest Florida faceoff, body language experts said Friday.... It was a marked change for Romney, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, an expert in political communication at the University of Pennsylvania. "All his nonverbal cues suggested directness," she said. "The halting delivery was gone. He didn't hesitate before responding. The indecisiveness disappeared."
The former Massachusetts governor also showed flashes of temperament, unafraid to display real anger at Gingrich's calling him, in an ad, an "anti-immigrant" candidate.
"Mr. Speaker, I'm not anti-immigrant!" he retorted. "The idea that I'm anti-immigrant is repulsive. Don't use a term like that."
The anger came off as both real and controlled, said body language coach Patti Wood, which was important because it projected the sense that Romney wouldn't be carried away by his emotions as president. ... Where did the new Romney technique come from? Both Jamieson and Wood say it was clear the candidate had been well coached. Indeed, Romney has been working with a new coach — Brett O'Donnell, formerly with Michele Bachmann's campaign.
"You don't make that kind of change without practice," says Jamieson.
Members of Newt Gingrich's campaign accused Mitt Romney's campaign of packing the audience for the Republican presidential candidate debate on Thursday night in Jacksonville, Fla., with its own supporters to ensure that the dynamics would be favorable to Romney.
"They definitely packed the room," Kevin Kellems, one of Gingrich's senior advisers, told The Huffington Post early Friday morning. "The problem for them is their candidate, at several junctures, couldn't remember what he had said before on an issue or what the fundamental truth is on a given topic. TV viewers tend to notice and remember things like that."
Mitt Romney’s crowds look like something out of the president’s suite at a University of Florida football game — prosperous, trim, Tattersall-clad, and supportive but not rowdy. Newt Gingrich supporters, with their spray-painted signs, American flag tees, flip-flops and fanny packs, more closely resemble a group that would fit in nicely playing a few bucks at the dog track. Exit poll data and unmistakable anecdotal evidence from their events reflects an unfolding campaign in which Romney does best with voters that are a lot like him — wealthy, well-educated and lukewarm about the populist tea party movement. Gingrich is appealing most to Republicans who earn under six figures, make up the core of the middle-class and are worried about their economic prospects and furious at the establishment.
A top conservative media figure said the flood of attacks reflects a “Holy crap, it could happen” moment in the movement, as Republican leaders began to realize after Gingrich’s South Carolina victory that he could become the nominee, the global face and voice of their party and theology.
“It could happen, and it would be a disaster,” said the conservative, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect private conversations. “All of us who were around and saw how he operated as speaker — there’s no one who’s not appalled by the prospect of what could happen. He thinks he embodies conservatism and if he wakes up one day and has a grandiose thought, he is going to expect all of us to fall in line behind him.
A GOP aide piled on: “Newt’s problem is his open marriage with conservatism. He has a long history of straying from his limited government vows. He spent much of the 1990s in bed with big government Republicans and lobbyists like Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist.”
A New York Times poll shows that Americans tend to disapprove of the lower tax rate on capital gains, which allowed Mitt Romney to pay less tax than other millionaires. Other data suggest why the issue may not be fatal in the nomination race:
But there’s a partisan divide, with just more than half of Republicans approving of the lower tax rate on capital gains, but about two-thirds of Democrats saying capital gains and dividends should be taxed at the same rate as income from work. More than half of independents – an important swing group in the presidential election — also say the tax rates should be similar. And most Americans say that what they themselves pay in taxes is about right, but that people with high incomes pay too little in taxes.
A little more than half say the tax rate they pay is about right, while about 4 in 10 say they pay more than their fair share. Seven in 10 Democrats say wealthy Americans pay less than their fair share in taxes, while Republicans are divided. Nearly 4 in 10 Republicans say that the rich pay less than their fair share, and about the same number say the amount wealthy people pay is about right. Nearly 2 in 10 Republicans say the rich pay more than their fair share.
And 58 percent of independents also say the rich are not contributing their fair share to the nation’s coffers.
Newt Gingrich has all but erased Mitt Romney's 23-percentage-point lead of a week ago among Republican voters nationally, and the two candidates are now essentially tied, at 29% for Romney and 28% for Gingrich. Ron Paul and Rick Santorum have significantly lower levels of support, at 13% and 11%, respectively.
The number of Americans with negative views of Mitt Romney has spiked in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, compounding the former Massachusetts governor’s challenges as he tries to rally from Saturday’s big loss in South Carolina.
Among independents, Romney’s unfavorable rating now tops 50 percent — albeit by a single point — a first in Post-ABC polling back to 2006. Just two weeks ago, more independents had favorable than unfavorable views of Romney; now, it’s 2 to 1 negative.
Romney’s losses since a Post-ABC poll conducted between the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary are not limited to independents. The number of Democrats viewing him unfavorably is up 10 percentage points, and among his fellow Republicans, negative ratings have jumped from 18 to 32 percent. (Prior to his Iowa performance, Romney’s unfavorable number had been higher than 18, but hadn’t been in the 30s among Republicans since early 2008.)
A conservative group linked to GOP mastermind Karl Rove ripped a pledge between U.S. Sen. Scott Brown and Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren to keep special interest-funded attack ads out of their race, saying the deal doesn’t go far enough.
American Crossroads, a group affiliated with Rove that has already been running anti-Warren ads, said the pact leaves gaping “loopholes” that will allow the Harvard professor to benefit from her strong union backing.
“Because the agreement allows union phone banks, direct mail, and get-out-the-vote drives — all union core specialties — Warren’s latest agreement has loopholes the Teamsters could drive a truck through, the longshoremen could steer a ship through, the machinists could fly a plane through and government unions could drive forklifts of paperwork through,” said American Crossroads CEO Steven Law.
Meanwhile, Law writes to supporters that the State of the Union provides the president's critics with an opportunity to highlight his record on the middle class. A video drives home the point:
