Democratic group, Priorities USA, fires back at Rove's Crossroads GPS with television ads
Updated: 1:57 p.m. ET
Priorities USA Action, a new Democratic super-PAC formed by two former aides to President Obama, on Wednesday launched a multi-state advertising campaign in direct response to a recent $20 million ad buy by the Karl Rove-affiliated Republican PAC Crossroads GPS.
The thirty-second spot, which will air over the next two weeks in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina and Virginia, aims to "to inform voters about the source of the Rove ad and the truth about the Republican economic record," according to a press release from the group.
Priorities USA Action spent approximately $750,000 on the buy, and expects to ramp up its efforts toward the end of the year.
The ad attacks the GOP's controversial (and much-criticized) plan for Medicare, as outlined in the Paul Ryan 2012 budget proposal, and blasts Republicans for "oppos[ing] economic reforms at every turn."
"The Republicans have opposed economic reforms at every turn," intones the ad's narrator. "And now they have a plan that would essentially end Medicare for future retirees... slash education... while giving huge tax breaks to big oil and the wealthy."
The spot also suggests that Crossroads GPS' recently-launched campaign - a $5 million, ten-state ad buy and the first in a wave of what it says will ultimately be a $20 million effort - is "politics at its worst."
"We know the ads blaming President Obama for the economy are politics at its worst," says the narrator, while a Los Angeles Times headline about the "Karl Rove-founded group" flashes across the screen.
Priorities USA Action, a 527 political organization that discloses its donors, as yet lacks the enormous financial resources boasted by Crossroads GPS - that group, along with affiliated PAC American Crossroads, boasts the financial support of billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, and has pledged to spend an estimated $120 million toward the next campaign cycle - but the suggestion of dueling ad buys by outside groups lays the groundwork for what is likely to emerge as a major theme of the 2012 campaign.
Bill Burton, one of the founders of the group, suggested that the group uses its conservative counterpart to galvanize donors.
"The people who are particularly motivated are really worried about the Koch brothers and Karl Rove, and the fact that they will have hundreds of millions of dollars to basically advance a hard-core, right-wing agenda," he said, according to Bloomberg.
"Even among donors who are people who wish President Obama was either more or less progressive, they all feel that it is important not to let the money on the right rule the roost," added Geoff Garin, the PAC's polling expert.
In a press release, Priorities USA strategist Sean Sweeney reiterated that sentiment.
"This is just the start of the Republicans $500 million dollar campaign to tear down the President," he said. "Their agenda is to use millions of dollars to mask their plan to tear down the middle class. Our goal is to keep them from getting away with their agenda."
