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Best political news of the week

Posted by Sini

Because it's the most consequential. The right wing's answer to MoveOn.org, funded by a single billionaire, may not be the threat it looked like initially.

Backers of Freedom’s Watch once talked about spending some $200 million, a figure that officials now say was exaggerated. Lending to the aura of ambition, the organization moved into a state-of-the-art 10,000-square-foot office in Washington and hired a staff of about 20, with talk of bringing in scores more for a vigorous campaign to promote conservative issues.

Behind the scenes, however, Freedom’s Watch has been plagued by gridlock and infighting, leaving it struggling for direction, according to several Republican operatives familiar with the organization who were granted anonymity so they could be candid about the group’s problems.

Although the organization was founded by a coterie of prominent conservative donors last year, the roughly $30 million the group has spent so far has come almost entirely from the casino mogul Sheldon G. Adelson, the chairman and chief executive of the Sands Corporation, who was recently listed as the third-richest person in the country by Forbes magazine. [...]

Mr. Adelson, who is aggressively expanding his business in China and was recently appointed to a presidential advisory position on trade issues, has been a prolific donor to Republican candidates and committees, as well as independent conservative 527 groups, contributing more than $2 million last year alone. He also established a foundation last year to support Israel and Jewish causes and pledged $200 million to it.

In another example of fumbling, staff members at Freedom’s Watch spent weeks working on an ambitious package for the presidential campaign that included message testing, polling and advertising, only for it to go nowhere earlier this year. [...]

The group spent $86,000 on advertisements in a closely contested special election for a House seat in Ohio that the Democrats eventually won, but it stayed out of a variety of other races where Republican officials said it might have made a difference. The fact that the group has largely been on the sidelines has puzzled some Republican and Democratic strategists.

“So far it has been a lot of bark and not a lot of bite,” said Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn, which has warned about the group in fund-raising e-mail.

The proof of its ineffectiveness is that it hasn't used this period of Democratic infighting to strengthen McCain (and damage Obama) in battleground states, much as Obama would be doing if the Clintons weren't trying to sabotage him in order to resurrect their moribund candidacy in 2012.

But don't ever count a billionaire out, especially when he has investments to protect.

Freedom’s Watch recently announced it had hired Carl Forti, formerly the political director for Mitt Romney’s presidential bid, as executive vice president in charge of the group’s issue advocacy. Prior to working for the Romney campaign, Mr. Forti was communications director at the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Given his deep experience in House races, Mr. Forti’s hiring seems to offer a hint of which direction a scaled-back Freedom’s Watch might take in November, perhaps more likely getting involved in Congressional contests than the presidential campaign. But Mr. Fleischer said no decisions had been made. He said the group would still emerge as a well-financed, influential voice.


11:39 PM |