Rove Group Buys $20M In Attack Ads

The National Journal reports:

The conservative group Crossroads' GPS policy arm is going up with a significant $5 million advertising campaign next week, attacking President Obama on the economy, according to a copy of the ad shared with National Journal.

Over the next two months, the group's television campaign targeting Obama's record on the economy will total $20 million.

The first ad, which begins airing next Monday, shows a clip of Obama joking this month that some of the shovel-ready projects in the stimulus "was not as shovel ready as we expected" while highlighting rising unemployment and gas prices since he took office.

"Obama's $830 billion stimulus failed," a narrator says in the ad. "14 million out of work. America drowning in debt. It's time to take away Obama's blank check."

The ad will be running on cable nationwide and also in key battleground states that Obama is focused on holding for his re-election. They include: including Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, and Virginia. It will be running for two weeks.

The $20 million that the Karl Rove-aligned group has committed to the ad campaign - well over one year before the presidential election - is a telling indicator of how much clout it will be wielding in the 2012 campaign. It raised about $70 million for the entire 2010 cycle on Senate and House races. In just one campaign, it's spending a significant sum of that to attack President Obama at this early stage.