Barack Obama and media liberals have frightened Democrats with
the specter of Obama being "swiftboated" by the vaunted "Republican
attack machine" of lavishly funded 527 groups. But there's no such
ship on the horizon, Steven
Thomma reports:
An effort to corral money for an independent group to
be run by former White House political guru Karl Rove hasn't
materialized so far.
"There have been a lot of conversations trying to get this off the
ground," said one Republican strategist, who spoke on the condition
of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk about Rove.
Another Republican said the deal fell through when Texas oil
billionaire T. Boone Pickens, who helped bankroll the Swift Boat
Veterans for Truth, refused to write a seven-figure check to get
the group going. He, too, refused to be identified because he
wasn't authorized to speak about Pickens or Rove.
"Mr. Pickens has decided that he will not support any 527s involved
in the presidential race this cycle and instead will focus his
energies and his funding on a major, bipartisan, energy-focused
public policy initiative that will be announced soon," said
Pickens' spokesman, Jay Rosser.
One major reason for the shortage of anti-Obama efforts is that
many conservative activists put all their eggs into the
anti-Hillary basket. Conservative authors in the past couple of
years had issued a whole catalog of anti-Hillary books that are now
politically irrelevant.
Richard Collins rolled out his StopHerNow.com group in 2006,
and in January,
Citizens
United premiered "Hillary: The Movie." Having invested so
heavily in stopping
her, the "usual suspects" on the Right
have fewer resources left for stopping
him.
topics:
Barack Obama, Books, Energy, Oil
