527s Gearing Up Ad Machine

Posted by: David Kiley on March 10

Seemingly taking their cue from the Clinton campaign’s negative attacks on Sen. Barack Obama as a kind of ice-breaker, Democratic 527s groups are starting to gear up an onslaught of ads that may not rise to the level of outright falsehoods like the anti-Kerry Swiftboat attacks in 2004, but still pretty harsh.

This ad

from Campaign To Defend America, against John McCain is very typical of the theme we should expect—that a McCain presidency will be equal to a third Bush term. Democratic strategist James Carville says Democrats see the winning formula in November to be: If you likes George Bush, you’ll love John McCain.

Repubublican 527 Freedomswatch.com has around $250 million stockpiled, and has spent very little. It is likely to wait until after the Democratic convention in August to run 75% of its budget. That is a lot of spend to jam into two months against Democrats in the national, as well as local and state-wide elections.

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