Three easy steps:
- First, create a Super-PAC for the 2014 election cycle. In this case, “Put Alaska First PAC.”
- Second, infuse that Super-PAC with Beltway insider money: “Nearly all of [Put Alaska First PAC] funds have come from the national Democratic group, Senate Majority PAC, and most of that money has been paid to a Democratic media buying firm created to work with Senate Majority PAC and other national super PACs” (note that the link there is from noted right-wing mouthpiece The Huffington Post).
- Third and last, count on the Associated Press to report your sock puppet as being a local group!
Seriously, this is remarkably bald-faced:
Republicans practically dare Democrats to embrace “Obamacare,” the GOP’s favorite target in most congressional campaigns. Yet pro-Democratic activists in Alaska are doing just that, and a number of strategists elsewhere hope it will spread.
[snip]
But Landrieu and other hard-pressed Democrats have not gone as far as a pro-Democratic group in Alaska that is unabashedly highlighting the health law’s strongest points.
The independent group Put Alaska First is airing a TV ad that praises Democratic Sen. Mark Begich for helping people obtain insurance even if they have “pre-existing conditions,” such as cancer.
…Apparently, the AP has a different definition of ‘independent’ than the rest of us do. At least, when it comes to Democrats. I mean, I suppose that you could argue that pumping Beltway money and Beltway advertising into a group with the right zip code and nothing else is compatible with having local, grassroots support. Then again, you could also argue that I am Marie of Roumania.
The funny part? I’m not even really bothered about this, although the Associated Press at the very least needs to have a chat with Charles Babington and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar about the need to look up political groups before they write about them. And the reason why I’m not bothered by this is because it’s increasingly clear that the people least likely to advocate that the Democrats run on Obamacare are Democrats who would have to run on Obamacare. This article doesn’t actually undercut that, although it certainly seems to want to try – and I very much like the idea of the Democrats telling their potential donors that don’t worry, they have a plan, look, see, we’ve got all this grassroots support and it’s gonna all work out.
Because that’s just throwing money away, and that money could have gone somewhere else and made the GOP’s life difficult.
Moe Lane (crosspost)