The Excuses Have Begun

Spinning Election Night will be as important to the Dems as the actual results:

With Election Day still a week away, Democrats are previewing what promises to be a main line of argument if Republicans make strong gains in Congress: Conservatives bought their way to power with a flood of spending by outside groups.

These post-mortems, made before the patient is actually dead, have slipped into public statements from top Democrats in recent days. And the argument is being made even more strongly in not-for-attribution comments to reporters from party operatives: A tough-but-manageable political climate turned much more lethal with the infusion of tens of millions of dollars from anonymous donors funding ads for right-leaning independent groups.

The denunciations of outside money by President Barack Obama and others began as a tool to rally the Democratic base before the Nov. 2 election. But in recent days it has morphed gradually into something else: A main talking point to explain—and fend off the recriminations over—what many Washington Democrats assume will be a brutal election night.

Voters aren't going to care about the money issue. They didn't care when Obama spent $700 million, much of it in untraceable money, to win in 2008. And they don't seem to care when unions spend tens of millions promoting Democrats every cycle.  They won't care in 2010 either.

They're  trying to make Karl Rove into a bogeyman because his organization has been wildly successful in raising and distributing funds.  However, as long as George Soros is out there funding liberals, it's going to be hard to claim Rove is doing something wrong.

And for those few who do care, there's absolutely no indication that anything illegal has been done.  Tough luck, Dems.