The GOP and its Tea Party faction have promoted the Supreme Court decision which allows corporations and wealthy individuals to give any amount to the candidate of their choice through super PACs. So in way, the GOP is consistent with its desire to return to the days of the founding fathers. While they are completely ignoring the goals of those men in keeping religion out of government (heck, they even chose to ignore their hero Ronald Reagan when he said "We establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain, separate" in his speech to Temple Hillel and Community Leaders in Valley Stream on October 26, 1984 http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/RR10_26_84.html ) they do seem consistent in their desire to return to a country where only wealthy male property owners had the vote (http://www.infoplease.com/timelines/voting.html)
The Guardian
Wealthy donors pouring millions into Republican race are named
Financial reports of arms-length campaign groups known as 'super-pacs' show which millionaires are influencing campaigns
The most significant political action committees in the US presidential campaign - known as "super-pacs" - have revealed the names of their wealthy donors.
The financial reports are a detailed accounting of money collected and spent by super-pacs. They underscore how millionaires and billionaires are influencing the election behind the scenes.
The casino mogul who, with his wife, contributed $10m to Newt Gingrich's group gave five times more than it collected from all other sources.
Restore Our Future, the group supporting former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, said it had collected $17.9m in contributions since July, most of which it spent on advertisements supporting Romney or attacking Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives.
The top four donors to the group were hedge fund managers. The pro-Romney group waited to file its report until hours after Romney was projected the winner in Florida's important Republican primary, just ahead of the midnight deadline.
Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife, who between them gave $10m this month to the pro-Gingrich group Winning Our Future, were not listed in the latest filings because the reporting period covered 2011. But the group's reports showed only $2m in donations, making the Adelsons by far the paramount backers in Gingrich's Republican candidacy.
Adelson, a staunch advocate for Israel, was rewarded in Gingrich's speech in Florida late on Tuesday with a renewed promise by the candidate that if elected, he would relocate the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Adelson has long supported such a move.
Winning Our Future and other such groups are the products of a 2010 supreme court ruling that removed restrictions on corporate and labour union spending in federal elections. The super-pacs cannot directly co-ordinate with the candidates they support but many are staffed with former campaign workers who have an intimate knowledge of their favoured candidate's strategy.
American Crossroads, the Republican group backed by former George Bush adviser Karl Rove, said it raised $51m along with its non-profit arm last year. Most of its $11m in contributions over the past three months came from roughly a dozen wealthy donors.
While most recent public attention has focused on super-pacs spending major sums for negative TV ads assailing Romney and Gingrich, Tuesday's figures are a sign of even greater spending to come in the general election battle between the eventual Republican nominee and Barack Obama.
The super-pacs' war chests underscore the extraordinary impact they will have on this year's race. In Republican primaries so far, groups working for or against presidential candidates have spent roughly $25m on TV ads, about half the nearly $53m spent on advertising so far to influence voters in the early weeks of the race.
Crossroads's financial reports identify wealthy donors who had given contributions reaching as high as seven figures by the end of 2011. Among the largest contributors was Dallas businessman Harold Simmons, who gave the group $5m in November and whose holding company, Contran Corp, donated an additional $2m.
Simmons is a major donor to Republican and conservative causes who pumped as much as $4m into the "swift boat" campaign that helped sink Democratic presidential nominee Senator John Kerry in 2004 by challenging his record as a Vietnam war hero.
Simmons, an early supporter of Texas governor Rick Perry's presidential run, also was a fundraising "bundler" putting donations together for Arizona senator John McCain, the party's 2008 presidential nominee.
Since this summer, super-pacs have spent tens of millions of dollars on ads in key Republican primary states such as Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. The super-pacs have also unleashed millions on expenses typically reserved for campaigns, including direct mailings, phone calls and get-out-the-vote efforts.
Outside spending by individuals is nothing new. Liberal-leaning billionaire George Soros gave more than $20m to help groups supportive of Kerry – these groups were known as "527" organisations – and his 2004 White House bid. The court's 2010 ruling in the Citizens United case essentially gave a green light to individuals who want to pump unlimited sums into outside groups that would in turn support candidates.
The Obama campaign disclosed a list of 61 people who raised at least half a million dollars for the president's re-election efforts. Among them were the movie producers Jeffrey Katzenberg and Harvey Weinstein, and embattled former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, whose $70,000 in contributions from himself and his wife were refunded by the Obama campaign and the Democratic national committee.
A handful of other financial filings began trickling in to the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday afternoon, including those from the Gingrich campaign. It said the former House speaker raised $10m during the fourth quarter, in addition to $5m this month. Those totals are separate from super-pacs money being spent on his behalf by outside groups.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/01/republican-super-pacs-presidential-campaign
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