smirk's buddy Sheldon Adelson and 250 million - heads up

[donsu]

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2942.shtml


Freedom's Watch may spend up to $250 million in 2008 election


President Bush has been to Las Vegas nine times since he was first inaugurated, but last Wednesday was the first time he ever stayed overnight in Sin City. He and his aides (and the traveling press corps) did so in luxury, staying at the Venetian, the palatial casino resort run by Sheldon Adelson, the chairman of Las Vegas Sands Corp. and a big force in GOP and philanthropic circles. (He is part of the money behind Freedom's Watch, the conservative foreign policy group formed as a kind of counterpoint to liberal groups like MoveOn.org.) Adelson and his wife, Miriam, were in the loading dock at the Venetian Thursday to greet Bush and jumped into his limousine to ride with him to his speech sponsored by a conservative think tank.

After the speech, Adelson -- who was at the White House in November for the official dinner for French President Nicolas Sarkozy -- hosted Bush at a Nevada GOP fundraiser at his home in the Tournament Hills gated community. A Nevada GOP official would not provide figures for the total take. -- Michael Abramowitz, in the Washington Post, February 4, 2008.
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In early December, Freedom's Watch, the well-funded conservative lobbying group founded by former White House staffers and extremely wealthy longtime Republican donors, fired its first shot in Election 2008. Founded last year, and making its public debut with a $15 million dollar advertising campaign in support of Bush's "surge" in mid-August, the group recently funded a series of ads in a northern Ohio special congressional election.

-snip-

The idea for Freedom's Watch was "hatched," according to Congresspedia, in March 2007 at the "winter meeting" of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) in Manalapan, Florida, where keynote speaker Vice President Dick Cheney "accused the Democrat-led House of Representatives of not supporting troops in Iraq and of sending a message to terrorists that America will retreat in the face danger." The RJC was described in 2005 as "a big money pro-Israel lobby group linking Jewish-American neoconservatives to the Christian Right and Israel's Likud government."

-long snip-

Patru seems better equipped for attacking than he is at prognosticating. When asked in a December 2005 interview with The Hotline, the National Journal's daily briefing on politics, if the Democrats could take back the House, Patru responded:

Patru: Trying to take back the House running on Duke Cunningham or running on Abramoff or any other issue may sound good inside the beltway. But in the real world, House races are local phenoms . . . voters have good relationships with . . . most of our incumbents are battled tested . . . if the issue is ethics here..it's a losing issue for Dems b/c we're more than happy to point the figure at them. Nancy Pelosi is the only leader in Cong. to have been fined by the FEC for having too many PACs. Rahm Emanual went to Chicago to campaign for Richard Daley . . . when ethics are brought up, most voters . . . look at Cong. and the approval level drops as an institution."

With perhaps as much as $250 million to throw around during the upcoming elections, we will no doubt be hearing a lot more from Freedom's Watch and Ed Patru.
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mention of the Rep. Jewish Coalition reminded me of a happening on Wash. Journal this morning. a caller asked if the guest was jewish and the host nearly leaped out of his chair, cut off the caller and said that was uncalled for. later another caller asked why the first caller was cut off and the host again got his back up and said they weren't having any of that. whatever that was?

a host has never acted like that before???