Karl Rove raised and spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the 2012 election cycle, though less than two percent of that money backed winning candidates. Even with campaign finance laws looser than ever in a Citizens United world, Rove apparently managed to break the law in the process. But the Federal Election Commission recently decided not to investigate Rove on partisan lines, so now two watchdogs are suing the FEC.
Craig Holman, a lobbyist for Public Citizen, said in a statement Thursday that the three Republican members of the commission had a “tortured and obstructionist” strategy and “refused to follow the FEC’s own policies in determining political committee status.”
The new suit points to a report released on Friday by professional staff at the election regulator, which built a case for why there is “reason to believe” Crossroads GPS violated the law and recommended that the FEC begin an investigation.
“The nonpartisan General Counsel’s office recognized Crossroad GPS’s failure to register as a political committee as a clear-cut violation of the law and strongly recommended a full investigation but once again the Republican Commissioners blocked enforcement of the laws on the books.”
We keep saying that the Circle of Scam is a feature of conservative politics, not a bug, and there can be no better example than Karl Rove. Four of the sitting members of the FEC were Bush appointees, and three were appointed in the final year of that administration. Not only does Rove escape any accountability for his colossal waste of donors’ money, but he can visibly break the laws about that spending and expect to pay no price because of the political divisions he helped to create.
Despite Mr. Rove once again managing to escape justice, there is a certain desperation to Rove’s act these days. We remember when Mr. Rove was building a permanent Republican majority, but those dreams are dashed, and FEC commissioners eventually move on. Mr. Rove seems to be trying to win a presidency and the Senate through sheer spending power, and perhaps that is the only way he will ever be able to continue these games. Maybe he must get back in control of who appoints and confirms FEC commissioners before someone does the unthinkable and starts enforcing the laws of the United States?