Not long ago, Gingrich seemed to be a big fan of super PACs. Newt has super PAC buyer's remorse

Not long ago Newt Gingrich seemed to be a big fan of super PACs.

The former House Speaker two years ago called the new legal framework that gave rise to unlimited fundraising by outside groups a “great victory for free speech” and predicted that the biggest of the recent federal court decisions deregulating campaign rules would make “it easier for middle-class candidates to compete against the wealthy and incumbents.”


Then he got a taste of the new rules in Iowa.

After weeks of withering attacks by a super PAC supporting his rival Mitt Romney, Gingrich won’t stop talking about the injustices of unchecked spending — specifically the $3 million spent attacking him. He even coined a name for it, saying he got “Romney-boated” by his chief opponent’s “millionaire friends.”

Though Gingrich says he still supports the court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, his shift in attitude illustrates the difficulty that the free-wheeling big-money election landscape can pose for politicians — even, and perhaps especially, conservatives who philosophically oppose campaign rules as restrictions on free speech.

“It’s one thing to oppose regulation in theory, but when they hit the practical reality of millions of dollars of negative ads, they don’t like the way the new system works,” said Trevor Potter, a former Federal Election Commission chairman and top adviser to Sen. John McCain, who authored the seminal 2002 McCain-Feingold bill restricting campaign fundraising and spending.

Romney, for his part, has also of late bemoaned the rise of super PACs. But he, too, supported one of the landmark Supreme Court decisions that set the stage for the explosion of outside groups, and he even appeared at fundraisers for the super PAC that eviscerated Gingrich.

McCain-Feingold and other campaign regulations were gutted by a series of federal court rulings in the past few years, capped by the 2010 decisions in cases brought by the conservative groups Citizens United and SpeechNow.org. They paved the way for the new breed of political action committee known as super PACs and other nonprofit groups to raise unlimited funds from individuals, corporations and unions for the types of biting attack ads that buffeted Gingrich in the run-up to his disappointing fourth-place finish in Tuesday’s Iowa caucuses.

Gingrich didn’t predict his current predicament a year ago, when he appeared in a video commemorating the Citizens United ruling’s one-year anniversary, saying the decision granted “the right of every citizen, whether you agree or disagree, to get up and be heard, to speak, to have space in politics.”

He also predicted in an op-ed that the decision would strengthen American democracy “by making it easier for middle-class candidates to compete against the wealthy and incumbents.”

But the former House speaker has repeatedly suggested recently that Romney colluded with an allied super PAC on anti-Gingrich ads, which would violate a provision that was reaffirmed by the courts that bars coordination between campaigns and outside groups.

Romney is “not telling the American people the truth” when he says he has nothing to do with the attacks from the pro-Romney super PAC, Gingrich charged Monday. “This is a man whose staff created the PAC, his millionaire friends fund the PAC, he pretends he has nothing to do with the PAC — it’s baloney,” Gingrich said.

The super PAC in question, Restore Our Future, spent more than $3 million on biting anti-Gingrich ads in Iowa. It’s run by former Romney associates Carl Forti, who was political director of Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign, and Charlie Spies, Romney’s 2008 legal counsel.

Restore Our Future has wasted no time pursuing Gingrich outside of Iowa, reporting Wednesday that it this week spent $265,000 in Florida on a media buy opposing Gingrich. Meanwhile, the super PAC spent more than $101,500 this week promoting Romney in South Carolina, documents filed Wednesday show.

Asked about the ads last month, Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, said he had nothing to do with them or Restore Our Future, but labeled the super PAC explosion “ a disaster” and seemed to call for the complete abolition of the groups. Romney supported the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court decision when it was handed down.

“Campaign finance law has made a mockery of our political campaign season,” he told MSNBC morning host Joe Scarborough. “We really ought to let campaigns raise the money they need and just get rid of these super PACs.”

David Keating, president of SpeechNow.org, which brought the case that led to the creation of super PACs, called the latter half of Romney’s proposal “horrible” and “an outrageous statement,” while Jim Bopp, the influential conservative legal activist who initially represented Citizens United, asserted Romney’s super PAC abolition idea wouldn’t pass constitutional muster.

Super PACs “could not be prohibited under the First Amendment,” according to Bopp, who advised Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign on campaign finance issues but is staying neutral this time around. Pointing out that several post-SpeechNow.org cases “have held that the First Amendment prohibits contribution or source limits on (super) PACs,” Bopp wrote in an email. “I am confident that the Supreme Court would agree.”

Likewise, Bopp said, Gingrich failed to make the case that Romney illegally coordinated with the former aides running the supportive super PAC.

“Nothing (Gingrich) pointed to — former staffer creating it, etc.— establishes legal coordination,” Bopp emailed.

But Citizens United President David Bossie, a close Gingrich ally, asserted Gingrich wasn’t making the case for stricter enforcement of the coordination laws, nor was he second-guessing the court rulings striking down campaign rules.

“I understand how that could be construed, I just think it’s off what he was trying to say,” Bossie said. “It was a political effort to try to get Romney to have his super PAC stop running negative ads. When you’re on the receiving end of an artillery barrage, you will lash out at those entities that are doing it. But they also have to understand the realities of the law ... and these super PACs are a part of the system.”

In fact, several campaign finance experts said Romney could — without running afoul of the coordination restrictions — heed Gingrich’s call that he “demand that every ad be positive” from Restore Our Future.

Gingrich last month issued such a dictate to any outside group supporting him and took it a step further by pledging to “publicly disown” any super PAC that went negative on his behalf.

In spite of that, a supportive super PAC called Winning Our Future, run by his former aides, had signaled its intent to go after Romney. And, hours after Gingrich in his Iowa concession speech vowed to hit Romney harder, Winning Our Future began featuring on its website a tough anti-Romney ad from McCain’s 2008 campaign.

That’s likely no coincidence.

“We’re Newt’s super PAC. We take out marching orders through the media for Newt Gingrich,” said Rick Tyler, a former Gingrich spokesman who is advising Winning Our Future. “I do what Newt tells me through the media. And it’s all within the confines of the law.”

Though he accused Romney of being “dishonest” about his relationship with the Restore Our Future, Tyler echoed Romney’s sentiment that it would be preferable if campaigns could accept unlimited contributions and super PACs weren’t part of the equation at all.

“Why would any presidential candidate want to operate in a world of super PACs?” said Tyler, asserting that campaigns would prefer not “to have any outside group have the control over the message that they do today.”

Republicans aren’t alone in struggling to adjust their world view to the new unlimited-money campaign landscape.

President Barack Obama, who joined McCain during their 2008 tilt in discouraging outside spending and assailed the proliferation of GOP-allied super PACs in 2010, dialed back his opposition after the midterms, when Democrats concluded they needed their own groups.

The president now seldom speaks of campaign finance reform and hasn’t objected to ads attacking Romney aired by a nonprofit run by his allies.

“I have no faith that Democrats want campaign finance reform any more than Republicans. They talk of it, but they don’t want it,” said Christopher Shays, a GOP Senate candidate in Connecticut who as a congressman pushed McCain-Feingold through the House.

The run-up to the Iowa caucuses was the most visceral demonstration of the new power of outside groups, with super PACs spending nearly $10 million on the presidential race, mostly on broadcast ads in Iowa and other early primary states, including New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. That figure increases almost every day, with super PACs primed to spend millions more by the month’s end.

The pro-Romney Restore Our Future super PAC accounted for $4 million of that roughly $10 million, almost all of which went toward tough ads that stalled and then reversed a surge that briefly catapulted Gingrich to the top of most national polls.

In one rapid-fire spot, Restore Our Future needed just 30 seconds to slam Gingrich for ethics violations, taking payments from mortgage giant Freddie Mac, supporting amnesty for illegal immigrants and teaming with Nancy Pelosi and Al Gore on global warming issues, while quoting political columnist George Will lambasting Gingrich as the “least conservative candidate” seeking the GOP nomination.

But, on Wednesday morning, Gingrich brushed off questions about whether he was the victims of the Citizens United decision or had “any second thoughts” about praising it.

“No, I’m not the victim of that,” Gingrich told MSNBC host Chuck Todd, instead singling out for blame “Mitt Romney, whose staff decided to run a deliberately negative and dishonest campaign.” He said “this particular approach, I think, has nothing to do with the Citizens United case, it has to do with a bunch of millionaires getting together to run a negative campaign, and Gov. Romney refusing to call them off.”

Interestingly, Romney, during his first political run in 1994, supported tough campaign cash restrictions, including banning PACs entirely, and “campaign spending limits,” telling reporters at a news conference “I don’t like the influence of money, whether it is business, labor, or any other group.” By 2007, though, he was promising to “get rid of the entire” McCain-Feingold law, and in 2010, he called out Obama for criticizing the Citizens United decision. Then last year, not only did his campaign welcome the support of Restore Our Future, but Romney himself appeared at multiple fundraising events for the group.

It wasn’t hard to predict that the deregulation of campaign cash would benefit a candidate like Romney over one like Gingrich, asserted Potter, the former McCain adviser.

Citizens United v. FEC, in particular, emanated from “the populist, small-donor wing of the conservative world, which is represented by Santorum and Gingrich, and was ideologically invested in the idea of doing away with regulations,” Potter said. “But not surprisingly, when the effect of that case is that you can spend an unlimited amount of money, the people who benefit most are the people who have an unlimited amount of money. And that is the establishment, major-donor corporate wing, which has been supporting Romney.”