Newt’s right on SuperPAC ‘lie’

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Updated: February 5, 2012 8:10AM

DES MOINES — The first 2012 presidential contest is over and we are already awash in political cowardice and camouflage.

Newt Gingrich, whose campaign nosedived in the cornfields of Iowa on Tuesday, may be a deeply flawed messenger, but he had something to say this week worth listening to.

Gingrich called Mitt Romney “a liar” for claiming he had no connection with the SuperPAC campaign attack ads that successfully deep-sixed Gingrich in Iowa.

Now, c’mon people.

Since the Supreme Court’s misguided decision of 2010 paved the way for new, allegedly “independent” political action committees capable of raising unlimited amounts of money to promote or destroy candidates, many of these SuperPACs are run by former operatives of the campaigns. That includes the “Restore Our Future” SuperPAC responsible for the attack ads on Gingrich. It is run by former Romney general counsel Charles Spies.

The amount of SuperPAC money being raised and spent is staggering, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. As of Tuesday, it reported, “267 groups organized as SuperPACs have reported total receipts of $32,008,813 and total expenditures of $15,903,273 in this campaign.”

“The sky’s the limit for this election,” says Sheila Krumholz, the organization’s executive director.

The SuperPACS, funded by corporations, unions and private individuals, “have the resources to speak 10 times louder and 10 times more maliciously than the actual candidates,” says Cindi Canary, former executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform.

“SuperPACS operate on the myth that they are uncoordinated PACs, yet it really begs our definition of what ‘coordinated’ means when you look at who is heading these entities — as if they can actually separate what their right and left hands are doing.”

Candidates — Republican, Democrat or independent — can take the high road with their own commercials and leave the SuperPACS to do the dirty work.

David Yepsen, the former Des Moines Register political columnist who now runs the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at SIU, says SuperPACs “have unleashed a torrent of money, and no one knows quite where it is coming from.”

“In most of the cases,” argues Yepsen, “these SuperPACS, run by people who at one time worked for or were a supporter of the candidate . . . are very careful and meticulous about not being involved with them now, but they are politicians, they are strategists. They know what their old buddy needs them to do.”

And that’s not even the worst of it.

The law allows separate, non-profit corporations to be set up as companion organizations. And those nonprofits, which can pour money into the SuperPACs, are under absolutely no requirement to disclose their donors.

That means the American public can be kept in the dark about who or what is motivating potentially virulent campaign ads.

Who are the candidates who have these SuperPACs? The long list includes Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Jon Huntsman, Barack Obama . . . and oh, yes, Newt Gingrich.

“If someone is intent on staying under the radar,” says the Center for Responsive Politics’ Sheila Krumholz, “it can happen with a SuperPAC.”

It’s so wrong.

But quite legal.