Everybody knows what Freedom's Watch is looking to do this election: get Republicans elected. But there's a line that can't be crossed and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says that they crossed it. From The Washington Post:

Democratic Party officials said they will file a complaint today with the Federal Election Commission alleging that a conservative political group has illegally coordinated its advertising with a Republican Party campaign committee in advance of a May 3 special election in Louisiana.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the fundraising and campaign arm for House Democrats, alleges that the script for a television ad purchased by Freedom's Watch, an independent conservative political committee, can be traced to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

You can see details of the DCCC's complaint here, including a side by side comparison of an ad run by the National Republican Congressional Committee and Freedom's Watch's ad, which according to the DCCC started running immediately after the NRCC's ad ceased. There are indeed some remarkable similarities.

But Patrick McCarthy, the media consultant who put together Freedom's Watch's ad, tells the Post that there's an innocent explanation.

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There's been a bit of a shuffle lately at Freedom's Watch, the billionaire backed conservative attack group.

Early this month, Bradley Blakeman, a former Bush White House official who'd been the group's president, left the group under something of a cloud. Unnamed conservatives grumbled that the group had not "figured out its role in the conservative/Republican universe," and there were whispers that some had been unhappy with his leadership.

But today the group announced that Carl Forti will serve as the groups' Executive Vice President and "will lead the group’s 2008 issue advocacy campaign." That means, presumably, that Forti will have some say of where that $200-250 million goes.

Forti comes off of a stint as Mitt Romney's political director -- and before that, the National Republican Campaign Committee's spokesman. Forti left the NRCC, where he was for more than seven years, after the 2006 election -- of which he confidently said earlier that year, "Incumbents don't get beat because there's a bad national environment" (d'oh).

When asked whether the group had found a replacement for Blakeman, Freedom's Watch spokesman Jake Suski said that was an "ongoing transition process." So in other words, no.

Freedom's Watch, the billionaire-fueled and highly-connected conservative attack machine, has begun its promised push to recruit membership -- to become "a conservative answer to MoveOn." But they're doing it in a funny way.

In a mailing that the group has sent to an unknown number of people, a four-page fundraising pitch (which is addressed, "Dear Fellow Patriot") is packaged with a two-page "Citizens Census." The "CONFIDENTIAL CENSUS DOCUMENT," as it's described in the letter, is actually a list of questions about core conservative issues, such as "Should we give our troops everything they need to fight our enemies?" with "Yes," "No," or "Undecided" as the offered responses. The questions are under the heading "FREEDOM'S WATCH CITIZENS CENSUS QUESTIONS."

When I asked Freedom's Watch spokesman Jake Suski whether the mailing was misleading, he strongly disagreed. "It doesn't even have the qualities of an official document," he argued, adding that the survey itself has multiple references to Freedom's Watch (true), that the fundraising pitch is written on Freedom's Watch letterhead (also true), and that the envelope itself says "Freedom's Watch" on it (true, on the back - see above for the front). "There's just no confusion about it. I think it's all in your head."

Well, here's the letter and "census" and here's the envelope it came in. Decide for yourself. It certainly reminds me of another fundraising pitch with an official aura: the "voter audit" letter from the Republican National Committee we reported on last August.

Suski, who was until last summer John McCain's Western finance director, wouldn't disclose how many such letters the group sent out or to whom it had been targeted. He would only say that "the response has been tremendous."

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We spent a good deal of time in the 2006 elections tracking the activity of third party groups on the right, groups with anonymous names like the Economic Freedom Fund. Funded by the most part by millionaire home-builder (and former Swift Boat patron) Bob Perry, the groups swooped in to attack Dem candidates throughout the country, airing radio, TV, and print ads and calling hundreds of thousands of voters with push polls.

But Perry only gave about $9 million to such groups that year. Freedom's Watch, with its close White House connections and network of Bob Perrys, is a whole new breed.

The group aims to raise and spend approximately $250 million for the 2008 cycle, a vast amount of money they apparently plan to use not only on the presidential election, but to greater effect in numerous House and Senate races throughout the country, where six figures can go a long way.

To review the White House connections: the group is headed by Bradley Blakeman, a former Bush White House official, Mel Sembler, a millionaire former Bush admbassador to Italy, and Ari Fleischer, who serves as the group's spokesman. Much of its support so far has come from Sembler and casino magnate and billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the sixth richest person in the world. (The group intends to "broaden its base" as time goes on, Fleischer says.) The group got off the ground with a $15 million effort to support the president's surge strategy in August, but it's sticking around for the long haul.

The Washington Post headlines its takeout on the group "A Conservative Answer to MoveOn." To which the founder responds:

Wes Boyd, who co-founded MoveOn.org with his wife in their home in Berkeley, Calif., said the two groups are fundamentally different because his liberal organization was set up outside the influence of Democratic Party operatives and is funded primarily by small-dollar donors around the country.

Freedom's Watch, on the other hand, is "doing attack ads by Beltway operatives, financed by billionaires, at the request of the White House," Boyd said by e-mail. "MoveOn helps millions of real people get engaged and be heard and is solely funded by these same people."

Whether Freedom's Watch is the right's MoveOn or not -- and at least for now the comparison is silly -- they're sure to be a major factor in the elections this year. A special election in December showed how:

Adelson personally wrote an $80,000 check to Freedom's Watch on Dec. 7... just four days before the election that gave Republican Robert Latta the House seat representing the district around Bowling Green. Behind a blood-red foreground, the group's ad showed Latinos hurrying under fences and being frisked by police as a narrator accused Democratic candidate Robin Weirauch and "liberals in Congress" of supporting free health care for illegal immigrants....

After Latta won, the DCCC chairman, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), issued a memo warning fellow Democrats about the new independent group gunning for them. Van Hollen's campaign committee has $31 million, compared with $2.3 million for the Republicans' committee, but he is deeply concerned that independent groups on the right are now engaged in congressional races while liberal groups are focused on the presidential race.

When it comes to political money, "there's a whole other universe out there," Van Hollen said he told Democrats. "Don't get lulled into a false sense of security."

Last month, Freedom's Watch, a conservative group dedicated to urging public support for the Iraq War and the president's surge, began its campaign of TV, radio and Web ads. But the $15 million, five-week blitz was just the beginning to a campaign that's seemingly as open-ended as the Iraq War itself. And that's thanks largely to the financial support of billionaire Sheldon Adelson, reports the National Journal's Peter Stone (not online).

"Sources say that the group has lined up commitments of almost $200 million (from Adelson and others) to finance its operations," he reports, noting that "the group has several A-list donors," but "Adelson by far has the most firepower."

Forbes recently listed Adelson as the sixth richest person in the world, with $26.5 billion in assets. He's made his fortune mainly off of hotel-casinos and owns the Las Vegas Sands company. Stone reports that Adelson doesn't serve on Freedom's Watch's board of directors, but "the group’s chairman is Bill Weidner, president of the Las Vegas Sands."

Also on that board of directors, of course, are Ari Fleischer, and Brad Blakeman, both veterans of the Bush White House (spokesman and scheduler, respectively), who've served as the public faces of the group.