http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5idlgcpzokxQM-Dde2ME1MFJUaj6Q?docId=464f77259c2a4642a557cc7acec5a39aWASHINGTON (AP) — A year ago, two top Republican strategists sat down for lunch at the venerable Mayflower Hotel, five blocks from the White House, calculating how to exploit the voter anger they had seen erupt at Democratic town hall meetings that summer.
Today, the money-raising success of the GOP-allied attack led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Karl Rove-inspired American Crossroads has stunned opponents and even its own architects. It's one big slice of the estimated $3.5 billion expected to be spent on this year's campaigning, a record for a midterm election.
Financed to a great degree by undisclosed donors — and helped by a new Supreme Court ruling — the deep-pocketed groups have become a dominant part of this election's narrative. They have reversed past pre-eminence by Democratic outside groups. And they have become a prototype for elections to come.
Their effort has been a major factor in the $264 million in spending so far in this election by outside groups — organizations separate from the political parties and candidates... The $264 million in outside group spending reported to the Federal Election Commission as of Tuesday already exceeds outside spending in the 2008 presidential year and is four times the outside spending seen for the 2006 midterms. Moreover, actual spending could be far higher because the reports cover only spending on communications. The money comes amid a new landscape in campaign finance created when the Supreme Court, in a case known as Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission earlier this year, opened the way for corporations to spend money in elections...
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