The cable news media continues to promote the narrative that the Tea Party is a grassroots movement, rather than a well funded PR campaign that is bankrolled by corporations and billionaires like the oil industry Koch brothers. Indeed, the corporate media narrative is so pervasive that democrats, liberals and progressives are blamed for their lack of leadership in matching the fundraising prowness of the corporate right. Here is a pretty good article discussing this shadow money, yet it too falls into false equivalency as it criticizes Democrats for not matching the corporate fundraising skill of Republicans.
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,2019509,00.html
That Washington insiders are directing this money pipeline is something of a reality check at this moment of Tea Party mania. The Republican establishment may be under attack from within. But it is still directing the heavy firepower — much of it funded by big corporate and Wall Street interests for whom the Tea Partyers have little love — that could decide who controls Congress after election day. This hustling is necessary, Republicans say, in part because of the weakened state of the Republican National Committee (RNC). The RNC's chairman, Michael Steele, has been defined more by his verbal miscues and reports of dubious spending (including an infamous $2,000 strip-club tab) than by consolidation of his party's position. "The RNC has the worst chairman in our history," says one prominent Republican fundraiser. "And that created a vacuum" — which restless party operatives have filled by reviving old groups like the RGA and creating new ones like American Crossroads.
Republicans say their new efforts merely level a playing field that Democrats and their allies — with the help of Barack Obama — have owned for several election cycles. Moreover, whatever the Republican groups are doing, Democrat-friendly labor unions are set to put some $150 million of their own money into the fall elections. Other groups, such as Emily's List and the League of Conservation Voters, will kick in several million more. But this kind of cash is different from what the GOP groups are generating. Much of that union spending involves member-to-member communications, which Democratic operatives say are less effective than TV ads. And ads from unions and single-issue groups tend to be less effective than those from a purely tactical group like American Crossroads, which can tailor a flexible message.
Meanwhile, Democrats claim something sinister is afoot. It's not just the dollar figures, they say; it's the disclosure. Unlike official party committees, the new conservative outfits are almost entirely unregulated by campaign-finance laws. That means they can raise funds in the millions of dollars — unlike federal candidates, who are limited to a few thousand per election cycle. And while some of these groups are required by federal law to report their donors at least quarterly, many are able to keep their benefactors secret. American Crossroads, like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, was founded under the 527 section of the tax code, which allows it to collect unlimited campaign contributions as long as it periodically reports its donors to the IRS. But its spin-off group, Crossroads GPS, defines itself as a nonprofit 501(c)4 organization under the tax code. The IRS says such a group "may intervene in political campaigns as long as its primary purpose is the promotion of social welfare." Ostensibly, that means that a group like Crossroads GPS conducts what it calls "hard-hitting issue advocacy." In practice, that means thinly veiled ads on behalf of Republican candidates, like an ad bashing Democratic Kentucky Senate nominee Jack Conway's support for Obama's health care reform, which ends with the memorable kicker, "It's the wrong way, Conway."
More important, perhaps, it also means that Crossroads GPS does not have to publicly disclose any information about its donors. And that, says Wertheimer of Democracy 21, "is a complete joke. Karl Rove and Gillespie did not create this organization to influence issues in America. The organization was created to elect Republicans and defeat Democrats." What information has become public reveals that some ultra-wealthy conservatives are bankrolling this effort, including Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp., the parent company of Fox News, recently gave $1 million to the RGA; companies controlled by the billionaire Texas oil mogul Harold Simmons have given $2 million to American Crossroads. Steven Law protests that some conservative donors might not want their names made public for good reasons. "People are concerned about intimidation," he says. But reformers argue that disclosure has been a central part of campaign-finance law since Watergate, with few examples of political harassment.
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