Get ready for the oppo research wars. David Brock’s American Bridge will be dispatching even more trackers to follow around Republicans all across the country.
From Politico:
Senior officials with American Bridge 21st Century – the group’s full, legal name – told POLITICO that the oppo-slinging outfit will grow to a staff size of about 90 people, including a full 50 trackers deployed to monitor GOP candidates throughout the country. That’s more than double the number of camera-wielding operatives Bridge employed last year.
American Bridge is growing its staff of researchers to 22 people and has already prepared oppo books on 20 Republicans running in competitive elections. The group is broadening its focus to include more House elections and, for the first time, gubernatorial races, and is using its nonprofit arm to join the fray in policy debates over immigration, voting rights and more. American Bridge has begun both monitoring the top tier of Republican presidential candidates for 2016, and truth-squadding GOP attacks on potential Democratic candidates in a recently-unveiled “Correct the Record” project.
Between its super PAC and 501(c)4 arms, Bridge raised around $3 million in the first six months of 2013, officials with the group said. It plans a budget of $17 or $18 million for the full cycle.
All that adds up to a dramatic upgrade in the group’s capabilities as it heads into its second full election cycle of existence. In an interview at the American Bridge offices near Washington’s Chinatown neighborhood, Bridge president Rodell Mollineau said the organization’s staffers and donors came out of 2012 convinced that their approach to research and communications worked, and was worth investing in further.
They’ll be building up their video archives, too, according to Politico.
Already in the calendar year 2013, Bridge trackers have recorded over 1,000 events featuring Republican candidates. Perhaps even more importantly, all that footage is going into a video library that’s now easily searchable by candidate, topic and keyword. The video the group compiles now – regardless of its news value in the present – will be around and quickly accessible, effectively, forever.
In other words, if you think Bridge is a clearinghouse for research in the world of Democratic super PACs now, just wait until 2016.
The organization also just recently announced the launch of its Correct The Record website, which aims to defend Democrats “from GOP smears.”
Judging by all of American Bridge’s connections to the Democratic party, and Brock’s coziness with various news outlets, it should be an interesting 2014 and beyond.
I can already imagine the parody videos in response. Hashtags too…
Read the full Politico piece, it’s rather informative.
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Politics is funny. Bibi, for instance, just tore the heart out of Israeli justice, by freeing bloody criminals. You think you catch criminals like flies? That there are no stakes involved? Yet Bibi is sure there will be no mess, because he has the entire media behind him.
I think this is true, here, too.
Organizations are flooded with dough. And, they go about trying to put on shows for the media, that could cancel out a good and decent local politician. (Until such a person drops his pants, alla Anthony Weiner. All on his own.)
You’re not building a Walmart’s, where price matters. You’re talking about people interested enough to vote. Who are now sick and tired of the usual clowns that show up on the ticket.
It’s been a long time, too, since we’ve seen a terrific showman. Reagan would have laughed at the efforts of the “American Bridge Society.” He’d proably point them out to the crowds, telling them that they were the “dummies.”
I think in a game of bridge cards are passed to 4 sides. But one side holds the dummy’s chair.
Again, I’m just playing around with how Reagan would not have been thrown off course by (let’s say the Bush Family) grabbing hold of microphones he’s already paid for.)
Why are there so few excellent politicians?
You’d think the field was wide open now for a great one to gallop down center field. (While the losers have their pants around their ankles.)
Ask Robert Bork, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, Hermann Cain, Christine O’Donnell…
Who in their right mind would chose to go through the inevitable media anal exam and have everything you (or a member of your family) has ever said, done, or written twisted around in an attempt to destroy you?
Ask people who lost their bids? So, you can do what? Double down?
Just peachy, wonderful!
So, now will the RNC follow the followers, tracking the tracker? If not, then the current RNC fair haired fink, the one from WI, needs to be replaced with someone who’s got big brass stones! Oh, also someone who can think beyond “what’s for dinner!”
🙂
The. American Bridge 21st Century is another bridge to nowhere.
They are looking for dirt so let’s record the truth for the record. And, demand debates. They think they can win with TV commercials.
DEMAND DEBATES UPFRONT.
Actual debates rather than media circuses run by the liberals of CNNABCMSNBCPBSCBS…
Don’t overlook the likelihood that they’ve included some violent people in that army of stalkers.
And don’t overlook the likelihood they are working at the behest of our government.
It will be interesting to see how much of the trackers’ cache of video and all is transformed into edited propaganda. And how frequently it is shows up within the media, MSNBC/Al Jazeera in particular, will be especially telling. This may ultimately end up being a tax free, Democrat donor sponsored arm of the dying media that can no longer afford to do similar “digging” and reporting.
I think they can save money if they just take the “lady in the pink eyeglasses” … carrying her sign that “she’s racist and she likes it.”
Meanwhile, IF crowds come along … and they bring their children … and they wave about American flags … I think the “stalkers” may have the same kinds of problems that the weird church runs into. In other words? Bikers show up. And, rev their engines.
Let alone Rush! He’s run his shows on “finding the million man watch!” Like he did when he photographed the site in DC … where you couldn’t find any people at all. So, he said “look inside the trees! By the leaves.”
and What is the Republican response going to be? Dead Silence.
What protects the dems from their own stupidity?
Nothing. And why should there be? They’ll be declared elected anyway, in some cases with the help of Republicans.
Winning.
And, then, on the GOP side you’ll have knock down drag out fights between Tea Party candidates (which has come to mean “very conservative,” instead of “fiscally responsible.” And, country club GOP’ers, who have their own set of rules.)
Do we have a Pub response?
If Karl Rove wanted to spend money intelligently he’d build an organization like this to focus on Dem candidates. Beats buying ads.
B-b-b-but that would be STALKING!!
I wonder how long it took them to get their 501(c)4 from the IRS?
Oh hell, not even a week, I’d wager.
If TEA Party groups, let alone any conservative 501(c)(4) tax exempt orgs, tried something like this, Holder’s DoJ would be all over them.
Yes, I know, they’re only “recording public events” which should be perfectly legal, but I would really like to see the Proggs’ reaction if a “right-winger” – say, James O’Keefe – did the same thing at one of their events. I guarantee they’d have him arrested. Charges would probably not be filed, or if they are, quietly dropped, but he would be forcibly removed until the event was over.
How anyone can take Brock seriously after he posed for that photo for Esquire in which he he was tied to a tree in a parody of a pose from medieval icons of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian is beyond me.
http://cdn.breitbart.com/mediaserver/Image%20Gallery/David%20Brock%20Tree.png
How can anyone take Brock seriously, full stop.
The man is certifiable. He has a long history of bizarre and often dangerous behavior.
IIRC, he’s also one of those light in the loafers crowd.
I recall enjoying his work in the American Spectator back in the Clinton era.
Maybe the Republicans should respond like Trayvon did. In his honor of course…
Silly String and Super Soakers.