NPR has put together a map showing the links between a few of those "independent, nonpartisan" groups. You know -- the ones funding the ads that always start with talk about how some Democratic candidate is best buds with Nancy Pelosi and how only Republicans can save your grand-kids from being eaten by Democrats who want to roast them over a heap of thousand dollar bills. Those non-partisan independents. Leaving aside the absolute disregard these folks have for facts (or for debt when the Republicans were piling it up) what the map shows is that far from being independent of parties, these groups are not even independent of each other. Karl Rove's Crossroads Media was well named -- it's at the center of everything. Over 100,000 ads and 1,000 hours of right wing propaganda is being carefully coordinated through one nexus.
Who are these independent groups?
This clearly isn't a bunch of individual, independent groups — as you can see from the map. It's one big network: a Republican campaign operation, working outside the official party.
This is the second Republican Party -- faceless, limitless, unhindered by any rules, willing to say anything, and beholding to... well, only one thing.
Money. Early this year, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations could spend unlimited amounts of money in partisan politics, and Republican advocacy groups have been flush with cash ever since. At the beginning of October, they had outspent Democratic groups by a 9-1 margin.
Sure, you can say that Democrats are able to draw money from unions and advocacy groups, but you know what? That's a complete red herring. The income of Exxon alone is more than enough to dwarf every union and every environmental advocacy group -- and that's one company. Corporations are quite able to drown democracy in enough cash that no one can sort fact from fiction, and at this moment the floodgates are wide open.
What will the corporations say and do to strengthen their stranglehold on the nation's wealth, politics, and media? Anything. And the Tea Party guys who buy into the idea that their media-created, corporate-funded, "grassroots movement" is somehow about returning power to individuals? The quislings of oligarchy, and the biggest bunch of dupes in history.