Super PACs pulled Romeny away from Median Voter

Conservative Super PACs spent gobs of money to get Mitt Romney elected in the general election, but they may have contributed to his problems courting the Median Voter. 

As we discussed in class, the power of Super PAC money in the presidential election forced him to gain the support of the more conservative donors and their Super PACs by using more conservative rhetoric to align with their views. This pulled him further to the right on the policy spectrum, and away from the Median Voter.

This article from NPR claims the influence of Super PACs prolonged the Republican primary, also forcing Romney further to the right.  Both Newt Gingrich’s and Rick Santorum’s campaigns received a second wind from large contributions from conservative Super PACs. Romney had to continue to appeal to Republican voters and conservative activists within the party to secure the nomination. In addition these PACs ran attack ads against Romney in the primary, laying out a strategy for persuasive advertising Obama would use in the general election. The Super PAC that supported Gingrich, Winning Our Future, launched an ad criticizing Romney’s history at Bain Capital. According to political analyst Tim Cooke, these persuasive tactics laid out by republicans helped Obama take a “baseball bat and beat [Romney's] brains in.” He says, “Romney could not recover. The bashing defined him, and he ran out of time to moderate his message from the far-right tack he took to secure the Republican nomination.”