Speculation abounds surrounding Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s future ambitions, but one group of fans has already launched a super PAC anticipating a potential 2016 presidential campaign.
The group, “Ready for Hillary,” filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission Friday. Professor and historian Allida Black is leading the super PAC,the Center for Public Integrity reported.
It’s certainly looking more and more like our Secretary of State has some big plans for her post-diplomatic endeavors, though Sec. Clinton has yet to confirm any plans to seek the presidency. Think she should run?
Joe Ricketts is a registered independent, a fiscal conservative, and an outspoken critic of the Obama administration, but he is neither the author nor the funder of the so-called ‘Ricketts Plan’.TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts • In a statement, released via End Spending Action Fund President Brian Baker, denying allegations he intended to implement the “Ricketts Plan” unveiled by the New York Times on Thursday. The plan called for a renewed attack on President Obama’s prior-association with the highly controversial Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Presumed Republican nominee Mitt Romney distanced himself from the ads, and campaign manager Matt Rhoades told reporters, “It’s clear President Obama’s team is running a campaign of character assassination. We repudiate any efforts on our side to do so.” source (via • follow)
Speaking of anti-Obama ads, here’s the early output of Karl Rove’s $25 million campaign to take on the president with attack ads. (Unlike the WTF thing we posted earlier, the attacks are strictly related to fiscal policy.) The Obama camp has already responded with a point-by-point YouTube video. Which is smart.
A Republican political branding group, Strategic Perception Inc., is working on releasing a ton of anti-Obama salvo in September or so in the form of a film titled “Next,” in an effort to make the president look as bad as humanly possible — bringing up such good memories as Jeremiah Wright and the one time that he shook hands with the Russian president. (The voiceover they want to use? Jon Voight.) But Republican ad strategist Fred Davis, working with TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, didn’t count on one thing: The New York Times got a hold of it first. Read the whole document describing the ad. It’s comedic.
» But wait … isn’t that a conflict of interest? Granted, Maher, who leans on the liberal side but has called himself libertarian in the past, doesn’t exactly hide his political views, but considering he’s a commentator who regularly questions both sides of the aisle, you wonder if that crosses an ethical line. Then again, will his audience care? On the other hand, as the Christian Science Monitor points out, Maher tends to do better, comedy-wise, when there’s a Republican in office, so this might hurt him a little. By the way, Maher’s announcement, which came during a Yahoo webcast, was a bit of a shock to those in the audience, though Maher had fun with the announcement, mocking the name of the Super PAC he’s donating to.
» A massive financial mind share: That’s almost $1 out of every $4 collected by all super PACs this election cycle, and certainly seems to explain exactly how we ended up with the remaining crop of Republican candidates that we have. Bob Perry is a former Tim Pawlenty supporter who switched to Team Romney with a $1 million dollar donation, while the Adelsons — who are ready to boost their support for Winning The Future from $10 million to $20 million — have provided the lifeblood of the Gingrich campaign. Of the remaining four candidates, only Rick Santorum finds himself without support, via Super PAC donations, from one of these five wealthy conservatives.
Occupying from within the system: Today, OWS created a super PAC called the “The Occupy Wall Street Political Action Committee.” John Paul Thornton is the treasurer of the committee. “It’s going to be fairly democratic. We’ll take opinions on how much candidates need and in what areas,” Thornton said. The point of this super PAC is to raise money … to stop politicians from raising too much money. “I am out to get the bloated amounts of money out of politics but to do that, we need to support candidates looking to do that,” Thornton said. source
The President opposed the Citizens United decision. … He continues to support a law to force full disclosure of all funding intended to influence our elections, a reform that was blocked in 2010 by a unanimous Republican filibuster in the U.S. Senate. And the President favors action—by constitutional amendment, if necessary—to place reasonable limits on all such spending. But this cycle, our campaign has to face the reality of the law as it currently stands.Obama campaign manager Jim Messina • From a blog post on BarackObama.com, titled “We Will Not Play by Two Sets of Rules.” In it, Messina attempts to explain why the Obama campaign, despite stated opposition to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling (and ostensibly Super PACs themselves), will be playing the same Super PAC game as the GOP candidate this year. This strikes us as a hard sell, especially to independents — saying President Obama needs to use a corrupted system in the hopes of ending said system doesn’t seem like an argument that would have much appeal to those not already extremely trusting of his administration. source (via • follow)
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This is happening people. Stephen Colbert might actually run for President (of the United States of South Carolina, of course).
We hope Colbert gets at least 10 percent of the vote in South Carolina. Would make things fun.
(Source: inothernews)
Treasurer of Steven Colbert’s SuperPAC resigns, now serves as Rick Perry’s campaign treasurer
Not the Onion.
We had to click twice to be absolutely convinced that this wasn’t The Onion. It’s not.
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