Truth in Advertising (Karl Rove’s Pants on Fire”)

Ever wonder where the money to pay for those attack ads on Elizabeth Warren are coming from? Why it’s from old friend Karl Rove’s group Crossroads GPS. The ad blames Warren for “bailing out the same banks that caused the financial meltdown, bailouts that helped pay big bonuses to bank executives while middle class Americans lost out.” It closes by imploring the viewer to “tell Professor Warren we need jobs, not more bailouts and bigger government.”

The accusation that Warren is responsible for TARP, bank bailouts, or huge executive bonuses is beyond absurd. TARP and the bank bailouts were Republican ideas that began under President Bush. Rather, Warren has also been a strong supporter of all efforts to rein in the “Too Big To Fail Banks”, including by breaking them up. In fact, her work creating and heading up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau involved advocating directly on consumers’ behalf, a key check on the power of big banks. She also ran the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP, where her role was to track the money that was given to the banks. She was extremely critical of both the banks’ and Washington’s inability to accurately account for TARP money.

Warren blasted Rove for the ad, saying, “I can’t find the right words to describe how wrong that is - factually wrong and morally wrong.” She added “Karl Rove is not telling the truth. I think anyone who is not telling the truth shouldn’t be running ads in this race.”

 It is unclear where Crossroads’ funding comes from because under existing election law, groups like Crossroads GPS are not required to disclose their donors, nor are there limits on how much those donors can give. Crossroads GPS was one of the largest spending outside groups in the 2010 election. There is little doubt that the group’s 2012 spending will dwarf its expenditures last year, using unlimited amounts of undisclosed money to run smears like the Warren ad against progressive candidates around the country.