Jonathan Martin reports that despite Barack Obama playing the victim card to justify his reversal on public financing, there actually isn’t any sort of large-scale anti-Obama 527 effort. One of the major reasons is that large donors don’t want to spend millions of dollars to go after Obama only to be publicly denounced by John McCain.
But another key reason is that conservatives were simply caught off guard because they were overly focused on the Clintons:
“We spent 18 months and millions of dollars making ‘Hillary The Movie,'” laments David Bossie, head of Citizens United and a longtime Clinton tormentor. “We’re incredibly proud, but the problem is the film has no relevance anymore.”
This is something I warned about in a cover story for our summer issue a year ago:
But at a moment in history when Americans are war-weary and eager for change, the optimistic, fresh-faced Obama should at the very least be considered a formidable candidate. To those who care about limiting the size and scope of government, the threat of Obama goes deeper than his potential to capture the presidency. In the Illinois senator, Democrats may have finally found a political figure capable not only of winning an election, but of advancing liberalism.
Here’s how I concluded my piece:
Is it now too late?