President Obama spoke at an Organizing for Action event last night and made exactly one reference to 2014, but not in the way you might think.
“I think here in Washington, this [OFA] idea has been viewed with some suspicion and people have been puzzled about what it is that we’re trying to do,” he said. “Because the usual idea is, well, this must just be a mechanism to try to win the next election in 2014. And what we’ve tried to explain to people is, is that, no, I actually just want to govern — at least for a couple of years.”
For a variety of reasons, Organizing for Action is being billed as an issue-advocacy organization, not a partisan political organization. For his part, Karl Rove isn’t buying it.
At a certain level, Rove raises a legitimate point — but Rove clearly isn’t the right guy to be asking it. After all, Crossroads GPS outfit, which ran all kinds of partisan attack ads during the 2012 elections, isn’t technically considered a political organization, either. Rove has classified it as a “social welfare” organization, despite the evidence to the contrary.
Indeed, Organizing for Action enjoys the exact same nonprofit legal status as, you guessed it, Crossroads GPS. It’d be just as easy to ask, “Rove says Crossroads GPS isn’t a political organization. Really?” Political activists who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
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