Crossroads GPS Spent More On Politics Than It Reported To IRS

AP Photo 

 

Eric Lach – November 25, 2013, 11:04 AM EST

 

You know what they say: a million here, a million there, pretty soon you're talking real dark money.
ProPublica on Monday documented how the Karl Rove-linked dark money group Crossroads GPS spent about $11 million more on political activities in 2012 than it disclosed to the Internal Revenue Service.
By comparing tax documents, ProPublica's Kim Barker showed how even though Crossroads justified its social welfare non-profit status by pointing to $35 million in grants it made in 2012 to other non-profits, "at least $11.2 million of the grant money given to the group Americans for Tax Reform was spent on political activities expressly advocating for or against candidates."

This means that Crossroads spent at least $85.7 million on political activities, not the $74.5 million the group reported to the IRS on its 2012 tax return. It also means political activities made up about 45 percent of Crossroads' total expenditures.
Here's how ProPublica did the math:

Americans for Tax Reform told the IRS in its tax return, obtained and made public by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), that it raised and spent about $31 million in 2012. Since the group got $26.4 million from Crossroads, only $4.6 million of its revenue came from other donors. At least $11.2 million of Crossroads money had to go toward the political ads reported to the FEC.

That means Americans for Tax Reform spent about 51 percent of its money on political ads reported to the FEC in 2012.
TPM has emailed a spokesperson for Crossroads and will update this post if he responds.

There’s Not Much That’s Funnier Than a Republican Confronted With Facts

 There’s Not Much That’s Funnier Than a Republican Confronted With Facts

May 24, 2013 By Allen Clifton

I’m sure I’m not the only one who, when debating a Republican, walks away thinking, “I wonder what reality is like on their planet?”
Because some of the comments I hear coming from these people would be hilarious if they didn’t actually believe them.  Hell, sometimes I even feel sorry for them.
For instance their hero is President Reagan, someone they call a “true conservative.”  Except, they can’t tell you exactly how he was a conservative.  He quadrupled our national debt, something Republicans don’t deny.  Yet they still consider him the epitome of “Republican conservatism.”  Then again, both George H. Bush and George W. Bush grew our national debt, so if Reagan is the example of “Republican conservatism,” they followed that example perfectly.
Most sane people know that being “fiscally conservative” doesn’t mean running up giant deficits, so calling Reagan a “conservative legend” doesn’t make any sense.
Or let’s look at the recession — they actually blame it on President Obama, and the ones that don’t blame it on him say he made it worse.  Which is just about as bad as those who think he caused it, considering our job losses were cut by more than 50% 4 months after he took office.  Only in the world of Republicans can reducing job losses by more than half, quickly, be a bad thing.
Then again, an improving economy is  bad news for Republicans.  Before the election, I always liked asking them whether or not they felt GOP politicians were happy when positive economic numbers came out.  If they answered yes, knowing positive economic numbers meant it was more likely President Obama would win re-election, they were most likely lying.  If they answered no, then they were basically admitting they knew their politicians were doing anything they could to sabotage economic recovery and hurt Americans.
Pointing this out, however, often caused their brain to shut down as they couldn’t come to grips that their party was actively trying to harm the economy, which made them the bad guys.
Last year’s presidential election really brought about the most ridiculous behavior by Republicans.  Nothing quite like a party which had pushed Obama to release 2 different forms of a birth certificate, and some pushing for the release of college transcripts, then saying their presidential candidate had no obligation to show more than 2 years of his tax returns.
What made it even more ironic was that Romney’s own father was the man who set the precedent for a presidential candidate releasing multiple years worth of tax returns.  Then Republicans tried to say Obama was playing politics over tax returns, even though it was during the GOP primaries that fellow Republicans  made Romney’s tax returns an issue.  Just more proof that blaming Obama for something they created is nothing new for conservatives.
Then when the story resurfaced about Romney tying a family pet to the roof of a car, Republicans came back with Obama eating dog while he was 9 years old living in the Philippines.  They really compared a competent adult with a family to a 9 year old eating what his parents told him to eat in a foreign country.
That doesn’t even go into how Romney said he wasn’t concerned with 47% of Americans, bullied a gay classmate in high school (cutting off his hair), flip-flopped on almost every major issue or how he displayed his ignorance by praising the health care system of countries he visited who have socialized health care (something of which Republicans have fiercely opposed in the United States).  Hit them with that and you’d probably hear about the time in 2008 when Obama once accidentally said there were 57 states, when he obviously meant to say he had visited 47 of the 50 states during his campaign.
Hell, even on election night Republicans were in disbelief Obama had won.  Karl Rove sat on Fox News, making a fool of himself, refusing to say Obama had been re-elected.  He seemed in denial that his side’s efforts to buy the presidency had failed—and failed miserably.  As for conservative voters, they were most likely genuinely shocked.  After all, Fox News and other right-wing pundits had been lying to them for months about Romney’s chances.  They painted most every poll that showed Obama headed for an easy victory as “liberally biased”, so Republican voters really did believe Romney was headed for a win.
And I can’t forget the “Great Benghazi Conspiracy.”  Well, at least that’s what Republicans wished it was.  For months they’ve pushed and pushed, first hoping to get something on Obama before the election and now hoping to get something on Hillary for 2016.  Except—there’s nothing to it.  In fact, the real “conspiracy” is who edited the “leaked emails” that were initially released to try and create a story that wasn’t there.  You’re telling me that Republicans knew nothing of the emails being edited?  Sure they didn’t.  But if you point this out to a Republican they’ll paint Benghazi as an attack as bad as 9/11 and a “cover up” even more scandalous than Watergate.
No, seriously—Republicans have compared those events to Benghazi.
Honestly, I could write a 5 page dissertation covering the ridiculous statements Republicans have made when confronted with reality which contradicts what they want  to believe.I would encourage everyone to show conservatives some of the articles I’ve written with linked sources which debunk Republican lies – Debunking Almost Every Republican Lie Against President Obama, The Article Every Liberal Needs to Show a Conservative or Part 2: The Article Every Liberal Needs to Show a Conservative.  Then watch as your right-wing friends or family members make fools out of themselves trying to make excuses for those lies.  It’s truly quite hilarious.

Related Posts on Forward Progressives:

• After Benghazi conspiracies fell apart, the GOP is now attacking Hillary Clinton…
• Karl Rove Gets Mocked on Fox News Over His Continued Benghazi Conspiracies
• New Poll Shows A Third of Louisiana Republicans Blame President Obama for Katrina…

Conservative groups driving GOP agenda

Now emboldened, conservative groups promise retribution for Republicans who stand in their way

By Steve Peoples and Philip Elliott, Associated Press | Associated Press 


WASHINGTON (AP) -- Virtually unknown outside Washington, a coalition of hardline conservative groups is fighting to seize control of the Republican agenda.
Tea party allies like the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and Heritage Action for America showed their might by insisting that the GOP embrace the government shutdown that hurt the nation's economy and the party's reputation.
Now emboldened, these groups are warning that their aggressive agenda-pushing tactics aren't over — and they're threatening retribution against Republicans who stand in their way.
"They refuse to learn," Chris Chocola, a former Indiana congressman who leads the Club for Growth, says of lawmakers who buck the will of right-leaning groups. He predicts that his group will support primary challengers to more than a dozen Republican incumbents seeking re-election next fall.
Mainstream GOP groups — such as Karl Rove's American Crossroads or the party's formal campaign committees — question their more conservative counterparts' role, fed up by their outsized influence in shaping the party's current agenda.
For decades, interest groups like the National Rifle Association have shaped debates on single issues. But Republicans suggest that not since the Christian Coalition of the 1990s have outside forces played such a sweeping, integral role in guiding Republican priorities as the tea party-led fiscal conservatives have in the ongoing budget debate.
"You have a small group in Congress that has become the surrender caucus," argues Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger. "They've surrendered their voting card to the wishes of these outside groups."
Such divisions on display between the Republican Party's pragmatic and ideological wings — and their affiliated outside groups — carry huge risk for the GOP heading into the 2014 midterm congressional elections. Republicans will seek to win power in the Senate and preserve their narrow House majority next fall.
But primaries that leave eventual nominees battered and broke for the general election could hamper that goal.
Nevertheless, tea party-aligned groups already are spending millions of dollars calling on compromise-minded Republican lawmakers from New Hampshire to Idaho to embrace more aggressive tactics against President Barack Obama's agenda.
This is their message as Congress wrestles with health care implementation, considers immigration reform and gets ready for new rounds of debt talks: Republicans who work with the Democratic president do so at their peril.
It appears that no Republican is too large for these groups.
The Senate Conservatives Fund — founded by tea party hero and former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint — has launched television ads against Republican leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who helped craft the recent budget compromise that ended the shutdown. It also has criticized Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Sen. Jonny Isakson of Georgia.
The Club for Growth also is targeting Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, despite his role as leader of the campaign committee charged with preserving the Republican House majority. The group already has launched a website entitled, "Primary My Congressman," and so far identified 10 potential campaigns to unseat Republican incumbents.
That group and others also are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to support a challenge against longtime Republican Sen. Thad Cochran, of Mississippi, in hopes of persuading him to retire. And the Tea Party Patriots is going after Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois and Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire.
Behind the scenes, GOP campaign officials are urging donors to fund mainstream groups to counter the conservative outfits. These officials are doing so even as they question the right-flank's ultimate effectiveness, given that its groups, although vocal, typically have far less money compared with other organizations standing with Republicans from the establishment wing.
The most powerful Republican allies from the last election — mainstream Republican groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Crossroads and its sister organization Crossroads GPS — poured more than $212 million combined into the 2012 election. Combined, the Club for Growth, Heritage Action and the Senate Conservatives Fund spent $21 million.
National GOP officials are watching for signs of rifts among the right-leaning groups, which could dilute their power. The shutdown debate itself exposed at least one disagreement.
The Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and Heritage Action for America defiantly insisted that any deal to end the shutdown and raise the nation's debt ceiling must dismantle or delay Obama's health care law. Lawmakers who didn't stand them with them risked inviting primary challenges.
But some tea party allies like Americans for Prosperity, the group funded by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, opposed the tactics that led to the shutdown. Now that group is trying to move on, investing $2 million in a four-state ad campaign that hammers Democrats over the troubled health care law implementation.
"We're convinced that repealing Obamacare is long-term effort," AFP president Tim Phillips says, explaining why it didn't sign onto the right-flank's demands to defund the law as part of a budget compromise.
In a sign of another possible crack in the conservative coalition, a spokesman for Heritage Action for America says that in the near future, it likely will focus its health care criticism on Democrats, who stood together during the shutdown debate.
"There needs to be some breaks in that unity," says Heritage spokesman Dan Holler. "That may happen naturally, or it may need to be forced."
But Chocola said the Club for Growth wouldn't stop pressuring Republicans, particularly as congressional leaders begin to debate a new budget package.
Chocola wouldn't rule out another push to link such legislation to the president's health care law, but said his group might shift its strategy if major shifts to entitlement programs are included.
As the possibility of a shutdown loomed large in September, the network of GOP outside groups disagreed over strategy.
Crossroads officials briefed members of Congress on internal polling that showed the shutdown strategy deeply unpopular. Given that, the group and its fellow mainstream Republican allies largely stayed silent, fearing influential talk show radio hosts and aggressive conservative activists would brand them as heretics.
Meanwhile, conservative groups grew even more vocal in pressuring House and Senate Republicans to refuse to budge from tea party demands to defund "Obamacare" as part of any budget deal.
Eventually, House Speaker John Boehner broke with the right flank and endorsed the bipartisan plan to end the 16-day shutdown and raise the debt limit. And 87 Republicans in the House and 18 in the Senate supported it.
The damage to the GOP was severe: a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 63 percent of Americans now have a negative view of the Republican Party, the worst rating for the GOP in almost three decades.
___

Follow and Steve Peoples on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sppeoples and Philip Elliott: http://www.twitter.com/philip_elliott

Stewart mocks ‘Turd Blossom’ Karl Rove for having to ‘battle the stupid’ Tea Party he unleashed

By Arturo Garcia
Wednesday, October 23, 2013 0:23 EDT

Jon Stewart shed no tears for Republicans on the Daily Show on Tuesday night, pointing out multiple instances in which the same GOP players who cheered on the rise of the Tea Party are now working to contain the damage they’ve done to Republicans as a whole.
“It’s as though the entire misguided shutdown affair was a culmination of a decade-long strategy to rile up and politically engage the most rigid and ideological pockets of the Republican party,” Stewart posited. “Which is why Karl Rove has no right to complain about all these radicals ruining his nice Republican party, because he’s the one who invited them.”
As proof, Stewart cited Rove telling author Thomas Edsall in 2004 that Republicans were out to play to conservative voters’ “anger points” like marriage equality or “free health care for immigrants.”
That kind of thought process, Stewart said, is what led to the sight of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) sharing a stage with the likes of Larry Klayman, who openly called for President Barack Obama to “put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come out with his hands up.”
“Now old Turd Blossom here has to create a super PAC to attempt to battle the stupid he himself unleashed,” Stewart said of Rove. “So, no simpatico for a guy who started a fire that now rages out of control.”
Stewart also mocked Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) attempts to rebuke his Tea Party colleagues as hypocritical, dismissing McCain as the “single least self-examining Republican crazy enabler,” considering McCain picked another Tea Partier, Sarah Palin, as his running mate for his failed 2008 presidential campaign.
“You opened Pandora’s Box,” Stewart said. “You were the guy who gave the Mogwai a post-midnight all-you-can-eat buffet. You don’t get to complain that now the party’s overrun with gremlins.”
Watch Stewart sound off on Rove and McCain in a video posted by Comedy Central:

The Daily Show
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Cenk Uygur on Conservatives' Reaction to President Obama's Syria Speech

Cenk Uygur on Conservatives' Reaction to President Obama's Syria Speech

By Heather      



The Young Turks and Cenk Uygur put together a nice mashup of the right wing and Fox pundits' reaction to President Obama's speech on Syria this Tuesday and as Cenk noted, they're really pissed off that they're not going to get their bombing any time soon.
After getting criticism from all sides who did not necessarily agree on whether the United States ought to use air strikes in Syria or not, now that President Obama has given his speech saying he wants to give diplomacy a chance first, the right is all in agreement that it's a reason to attack him, call him weak and claim that his presidency is doomed. It seems the only way these wingers believe we can show we're not weak is by lobbing a few bombs on some more people's heads in the Middle East, because that's what tough guys do, don't ya' know.
Like Uygur, I'm so sick of these Republicans and the fact that the only thing consistent about their policies is that if President Blackenstein (as Bill Maher calls him) is for something, they're going to be against it, even if they were for it a year, or week, or even a day before.
Our government would function a whole lot better if we had some people running it who actually cared about what was good for their constituents who are not part of the one percent instead of governing by sabotage to make a Democratic president look bad, consequences be damned, with this goon squad on Fox cheerleading for them all the way.




Cenk Uygur on Conservatives' Reaction to President Obama's Syria Speech http://t.co/8gvuQShvJz