GOP outside group spending millions to attack Obama on economy
Crossroads GPS, one of the large outside political organizations that changed the political landscape with millions of dollars of advertisements aimed at Democrats running for office in 2010, is back with a new ad taking aim at President Obama.
The ad, starting Monday, will run over the next two months and includes a $5 million buy on national cable channels and local stations in key swing states including Colorado, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada and Virginia.
It's part of a $20 million initiative from Crossroads "to frame the national debate on jobs, the economy and the national debt."
Called "Shovel Ready," the ad faults President Obama for failing to turn around the economy and specifically suggests the stimulus program has failed.
After playing a clip of President Obama from 2010 saying then "...our economy...is now growing at a good clip," the ad cites a series of statistics showing gas prices, the national debt, and unemployment have all risen since he took office.
The Obama administration has admitted that while the stimulus did create or save millions of jobs, some infrastructure projects were not as shovel ready as first thought. (The term "shovel ready" refers to projects that are immediately ready to start. ) The ad makes this point with a second Obama sound bite in which he says "Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected." The ad ends with the announcer saying "14 million out of work. America drowning in debt. It's time to take away Obama's blank check."
"President Obama may have inherited a recession, but his policies have made things worse for everyday Americans by running up the debt and causing economic uncertainty," said Steven Law, president of Crossroads GPS. "Now Obama seems checked out of efforts to reduce America's dangerous debt load, while his party is pushing massive tax increases and even more spending."
Crossroads, the first major political organization to take advantage of new campaign finance rules established by the Supreme Court in ruling last year, spent tens of millions of dollars on ads throughout the 2010 midterm election attacking Senate and House Democratic incumbents and some Democratic challengers running for Congress. The group is associated with Karl Rove, the former Senior Adviser for President George W. Bush, and a frequent target for Democratic attacks on Republican political tactics.
"Not content with the grave economic crisis he helped to leave our country with, Karl Rove now wants to stop President Obama from fixing it," Bill Burton, a Senior Strategist to Priorities USA, a Democratic political action committee said in a statement to CBS News. "While President Obama is making progress, the Republican economic plan would 'essentially end Medicare' in order to give tax breaks to oil companies and their other wealthy donors."
Burton's outside group, which mirrors the Crossroads model, is an independent expenditure organization that, according to its website, "supports candidates who will advance policies that provide the strongest and most sound outcomes for middle class families."
