Preview of video below the Orange Squiggle of Power.
A casino billionaire named Sheldon Aldeson (TPM) has given $5M to a pro-Newt Super PAC which will run "Swift-Boat" style ads against Mitt Romney. Swift-boat refers to the general style and tone and ad hominem nature, not to the level of accuracy, BTW.
From the NYT:
The advertisements, a counterpunch to a campaign waged against Mr. Gingrich by a group backing Mr. Romney, will be built on excerpts from a scathing movie about Bain Capital, the private equity firm Mr. Romney once ran. The movie, financed by a Republican operative opposed to Mr. Romney, includes emotional interviews with people who lost jobs at companies that Bain bought and later sold.
... SNIP ...
The group said it would spend $3.4 million initially on radio and TV advertisements starting Wednesday in South Carolina, where the campaign will move after New Hampshire. Mr. Gingrich, who held the lead in the polls in South Carolina last month before falling back, attributes his fade there and earlier in Iowa, where he finished fourth in the caucuses last week, to a deluge of attack advertisements from a super PAC supporting Mr. Romney, Restore Our Future.
For comparison, the total amount spent in Iowa by all candidates on media buys was approximately $15M. The population of Iowa is 3M; the population of South Carolina is 4.5M.
The last-week attack ads against Newt Gingrich were judged to be largely responsible for his poll decline in Iowa (of about 2/3 of his support) - and remember, the odious Newt has very high name recognition and is regarded as a known quantity. This decline in Newt's support turned the Iowa caucuses into a frothy mixture that allowed Santorum to rise to the top. It is not impossible that a barrage of ads about Mitt's reign at Bain, which caused much pain, could resonate and bring Mitt's support down in South Carolina. After all, a company that made billions while bankrupting nearly 1/4th of the companies it invested in does sound pretty Wall Street insiderish to me.
The preview
Who is this Sheldon Aldeson, anyway?
The New Yorker answers at very considerable length. For your brief convenience, he's the 3rd richest man in the country per Forbes, a Jew who supports hardline positions by Israel, and a fervent Islamophobe. This shared worldview regarding the Middle East accounts for Aldeson's support of Gingrich.
So why take Romney on now, at this late date? Because it's not ideological. It's personal, per Josh Marshall over at TPM. Newt is so angry at Mitt for standing between Newt and the White House that he is on a crusade of personal vengeance - and for Aldeson, $5M is a small amount to spend to help a friend avenge himself on his enemies.
And the lesson for American politics? Post Citizens United, don't piss off a billionaire, and don't piss off the friend of a billionaire. It may not be long before billionaires buy politicians as a vanity project the way some buy pro sports teams.
Another point - this video could have been made, with a few tweaks, by Occupy. As a portrayal of how capitalism can run amok and inflict harm on the ordinary citizens, it's pretty accurate. And by "with a few tweaks" I mean "a whole lot better" because frankly the bombast of this piece is a little off-putting.
Somewhere Barack Obama is smiling. This is one of his primary lines of attack against Mitt, and here a GOP Super PAC is making and running the ads for him.