A sustained White House campaign to drum up controversy over how much outside groups are influencing the congressional elections may be paying off.
At the very least, the administration’s attacks on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and groups affiliated with former Bush political guru Karl Rove are distracting some voters from the Republicans’ attacks on President Obama’s leadership and agenda.
For weeks, Obama and his surrogates have been complaining that those groups are not required to report contributors even as they pour tens of millions of dollars into ads attacking Democrats. The result, according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, is that 74 percent of voters are now concerned about outside groups with their own agenda influencing elections, and 72 percent are concerned about the lack of disclosure.
By hammering the idea every day, the White House succeeded in constructing a new campaign issue. What’s less clear is how that issue could possibly shift the results of an election in which voters are most concerned about jobs and the economy. The poll shows that worries about the influence of outside groups on the election have done nothing to shift the dynamics of an election Republicans are expected to dominate.
“They are obviously trying to fire up their union base and working-class voters who get upset about this stuff,” said Susan MacManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida. “Unfortunately, most people really care about jobs and home foreclosure rates.”
In all, outside interest groups have spent $258 million on the midterms, according the Center for Responsive Politics, with conservative groups outspending liberals by 50 percent. In 2006, such groups spent $69 million, total.
The White House has repeatedly complained about shadowy campaign spending, including the alleged use of foreign money, by the Chamber of Commerce and groups affiliated with Rove on advertising in some congressional races.
“These ads completely distort Democrats’ records. But it’s a powerful force,” Obama said this week. “If you’re in a competitive House race right now, if you’re in a state like Colorado and you just watch this stuff, I mean, it is just a blizzard of negative ads.”
Rove and others have said that what they are doing is legal and mirrors what liberal interest groups have done in previous elections.
For the White House, the concern over conservative groups dovetails with another emerging theme from the West Wing, that the reason Obama’s policies are unpopular is because of flawed messaging and the disinformation of political opponents. In an interview Wednesday with conservative radio talk show host Michael Smerconish, Obama repeated that complaint, saying his health care reforms are unpopular in large part because of a Republican smear campaign.
Despite its success in raising concerns about the Republican-leaning groups, the White House’s biggest problem in this election remains employment and the economy, both of which remain in bad shape.
“It’s hard to message 9.5 percent unemployment,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs conceded in a recent interview with GQ.
