Besting them at their own game: Planned Parenthood PACs outperform Rove’s

By Frederick Sparks

And it wasn’t even close. According to the Sunlight Foundation,  97.82% of the expenditures of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund Inc. and 98.58% of the expenditures of Planned Parenthood Votes’ ended in the desired results, in terms of candidates supported and opposed.   As a comparison:

The worst performers were the NRA’s super PAC and Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, with 0.81 percent and 1.29 percent respectively.

Sweet irony.

I was in Nevada as part of a large group of volunteer lawyers acting as poll observers, and an old friend now serving as a political consultant in Las Vegas told me that P.P. was organized and energized through this entire cycle.   The anti-choice forces and the politicians who cater to them stirred up a real hornets’ nest.   While Citizen’s United remains a disaster of a Supreme Court decision and we’d be far better off with publicly funded elections, sometimes you have to play defense, and I for one am proud of Planned Parenthood for doing it so well.

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Besting them at their own game: Planned Parenthood PACs outperform Rove’s
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13 thoughts on “Besting them at their own game: Planned Parenthood PACs outperform Rove’s

  1. 2

    Publicly funded election campaigns are one of those ideas that looks good on the surface, but turns out to be a can of worms. When you inject money into a market, prices boom. See the housing bubble and the healthcare mess. Any attempt to prohibit political advertising not paid for with each candidates allowance (and who decides who gets how much?) would violate the First Amendment, so the major parties would have their tax-funded subsidies on top of what they are already raising. That would be a bonanza for broadcasters, publishers and manufacturers of campaign merchandise, but I can’t see it doing much good for the rest of us.

  2. 4

    Publicly funded election campaigns are one of those ideas that looks good on the surface, but turns out to be a can of worms. When you inject money into a market, prices boom. See the housing bubble and the healthcare mess. Any attempt to prohibit political advertising not paid for with each candidates allowance (and who decides who gets how much?) would violate the First Amendment, so the major parties would have their tax-funded subsidies on top of what they are already raising. That would be a bonanza for broadcasters, publishers and manufacturers of campaign merchandise, but I can’t see it doing much good for the rest of us.

    If that were true, how come that the US elections are exploding money-wise, and countries with some version of public-funded elections don’t?

    Basically, the concept is that you tightly regulate money from other sources (pretty much the opposite of Citizens United), and as to who decides who gets it, typically the public money is some sort of per-vote deal.

    I don’t know all the details, but when I compare the situation here to that in the US, I’d have to say it works pretty well.

    I’m always boggled how many US citizens pronounce confidently what will and will not work, with seemingly no idea that what is discussed is already in use elsewhere, and you can just look to see how it turns out. It seems their world ends at the US borders. Even those who know anything, often what they “know” is nothing but a caricature.

    Not that this doesn’t happen elsewhere. It’s just that with the US, it happens so damn often.

  3. 5

    Thanks for this information, and let me also say a big THANK YOU for your work and for your efforts during this election. I’ve been a long time donor to PP and have been so gratified to see them, at every turn, trounce those who have tried to oppose them.

  4. 7

    Wow, that’s amazing efficiency (or selection criteria for supporting candidates).

    To be fair though, many Republicans write their own negative ads. All one need do is quote/replay their own words to get a thinking person to say “What???”

    I’ve been wondering how much Romney’s total was hurt by the prevalent dum-assery of lower office GOP candidates.

  5. 10

    Karl Rove had better hope his public profile remains high enough to keep him safe. Rove took scores of millions of dollars from Las Vegas CASINO BOSSES and lost it all (well, he got no return for the $, which is the same as losing it right?).

    Let me say that again: Rove pissed away scores of millions of CASINO dollars. He cannot feel too safe today. The only thing that he has going for himself as far as his personal safety is concerned is his high profile. And that might not be enough.

    I am not (completely) joking about this. The man played with fire, now he really could get burned. Some Joe Pesci looking guy might someday soon pop two .22s behind his ear, then dump him in a deep cement foundation somewhere; and then, for the next few decades our nation’s pop-culture will be wondering about and speculating about what happened to Karl. Remember Hoffa! Rove should be worried.

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