What We Learned: At A Crossroads
We, the Hotline learned this week:
. - More evidence of the power of outside groups is increasingly eclipsing the role of parties in elections: the money the GPS Carrefour conservative group "dedicated to an advertising campaign targeting Pres Obama over the next two months is more than triple the $ 6.2 million that the Republican National Committee has in cash.
- Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney began the week defending his decision not to sign a commitment on the List of Susan B. Anthony.Declared his "honeymoon" was also said to have ended at the beginning of the week that the candidates have begun to directly attack the front runner.
However, Romney came in first this week playing to his strengths - ie its ability to raise lots of money. Not to be outdone by his one-day fundraiser that raised $ 10 million in May, Romney closed this week ahead of the pack. He announced a fundraiser in London in July to solicit campaign contributions from well-connected Americans abroad, and continued his fund-raising blitz in June with stops in Utah.Romney supporters are also getting into the game of fundraising and have been quietly starting a PAC whose great political director Carl also happens to be Forti, political director for American Crossroads.
- Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin can not be candidate for president, but give him this: it certainly has a talent for walking on the toes of the real candidates. First it was Palin tour "One Nation" bus traveling ostensibly in New Hampshire, the day Romney launched his campaign there. Palin has insisted that it was an accident, and Romney does not seem to mind.
But here's an even more striking big-up: Sarah Palin will attend the world premiere of "The Undefeated," a documentary defending his political legacy, in Pella, Iowa on Tuesday night - a day after Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. , Launches campaign to 100 miles in Waterloo, Iowa. Coincidence? Maybe. But Palin visiting the Hawkeye State - where it has been noticeably absent the last seven months - will siphon off much of the media coverage of the great day of Bachmann.Whether intentionally or not, Sarah Palin has a habit of upstaging the media most inopportune times to his potential Republican rivals.