American Crossroads is coming for Hillary Clinton, and soon.
The premiere Republican-aligned super PAC plans to spend many months targeting the likely Democratic presidential nominee before the Republicans have chosen a candidate.
According to the PAC’s president and CEO, Steven Law, American Crossroads will start off with opposition research and polling. Paid advertising to undermine Clinton’s candidacy will come later.
Law detailed the approach of American Crossroads, which was formed in 2010 by former White House strategist Karl Rove, during an interview with the Washington Examiner. Rather than indiscriminate attacks, Law’s 2016 goal is to digest and analyze all of the information American Crossroads compiles on President Obama’s former secretary of state, and chart a disciplined, competent battle plan that doesn’t backfire on Republicans.
“My concern about Hillary is that [there] are new micro groups starting up on almost a weekly basis, all which have as their mission to destroy Hillary, and I worry that there’s potentially a thin line that could be crossed from somebody being a pariah and somebody being a victim,” Law said. “A surgical approach is a lot more effective than just carpet-bombing, and so we’re going to try to develop a sense of doctrine ourselves about what the most effective way would be to challenge her and the right timing for that and the right messages and the right audience.”
American Crossroads, which is still advised on an unpaid basis by Rove, picked sides in a few Senate primaries in 2014, supporting so-called Establishment candidates. But Law confirmed that the super PAC would not play in the 2016 presidential primary, instead husbanding its resources for the fight against Clinton. The launch this month of Senate Leadership Fund, a dedicated super PAC to support Republican Senate candidates in 2016, also run by Law, frees up American Crossroads to attend more exclusively to the presidential contest.
The Republican field of potential White House candidates is crowded with sitting senators, sitting governors, former governors and private sector entrants. The primary could be a super slugfest for the next 15 months, with a presumed nominee possibly not emerging until April of 2016, just three months before the GOP’s national convention kicks off in Cleveland on July 18.
Federal law prohibits presumed nominees from accessing funds raised for the general election prior to being officially crowned as the party standard bearer at the nominating convention. American Crossroads is focused on filling the void between then and now, an 18-month period. Law wants American Crossroads to help prevent a repeat of 2012, when GOP nominee Mitt Romney had trouble defending against Obama’s attacks over the summer because he couldn’t use money he’d raised for November.
Law said American Crossroads has a projected budget for the presidential race but would only describe it as “plenty.” The group has a mixed record on effectiveness. American Crossroads and its nonprofit sister organization, Crossroads GPS, spent $50 million on direct advocacy in House and Senate races in the 2014 cycle, which ended with decisive GOP gains in both chambers; but it also spent more than $85 million against Obama in 2012, which came to nothing as the president handily defeated Romney and his party picked up seats.
Law is still considering the best way for American Crossroads to make an impact in 2016.
“It’ll be important for groups like ours,” Law said, “to fill the interregnum period between when the nominee is selected by our party and when they’re actually able to step into the ring.”
Law said American Crossroads and other entities were active on this front in 2012, but he believes they missed a critical strategic element that might have helped Romney: positive ads to build up the Republican, not just attack ads seeking to tear down the Democrat.
“The part that was not present [in 2012] that I think everyone would have to take a hard look at is defending the nominee as opposed to defining the opponent. That’s something that I think everybody’s going to have to sort through,” Law said.
