Super PACs are new phenomena in American politics. They are a product of two judicial decisions: the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, delivered in January 2010, and the D.C. Circuit’s decision in Speechnow.org v. Federal Election Commission, two months later. Together, these two decisions enabled the creation of a new entity: a political action committee that could accept unlimited donations so long as it did not coordinate its expenditure with any political campaign.

Advocates of campaign-spending limits were left aghast. In his 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama delivered a rare—perhaps unique—reprimand to the Supreme Court justices assembled in a row only a few yards away from him. “With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections.”

And the spending came: hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of political spending, denominated in gifts in the millions and tens of millions and even hundreds of millions.

But what did it all buy?

In an interview on election night 2012, Chris Wallace challenged Karl Rove: “[American] Crossroads, which you helped found, spent—what?—$325 million, and we’ve ended up with the same president, the same Democratic majority in the Senate, and the same Republican majority in the House. Was it worth it?”

Many donors expressed similar frustrations, in public and—even more forcefully—in private.

American Crossroads would soon fade from the scene. In 2012, Crossroads backed eight U.S. Senate candidates. Six lost. The two who won had received comparatively minuscule amounts, leading some to scoff that Crossroads had achieved a return on investment of only 1 percent. Fundraising would decline to $100 million in 2014.*

Along with the noisy grumbling about Crossroads’ effectiveness, more unnerving doubts were quietly expressed within the conservative world. Had the money all been spent on the intended purposes? Had too much been spent on salaries, fees, expenses, and other forms of personal inurement? Politico’s Ken Vogel reported these whisperings in his June 2014 book, Big Money—and predicted Crossroads’ likely demise. In the current cycle, Crossroads has only spent $116,495 to date, according to the tally kept by OpenSecrets.org.

Disappointment did not, however, lead to disillusionment. After all, the super PAC connected to the Mitt Romney presidential campaign—Restore Our Future—had delivered powerful results. During the 2012 primary season, the ad barrage launched by Restore Our Future had crushed one Romney alternative after another. Restore Our Future saved the day during Romney’s moment of maximum danger: the 10 days between his 12-point defeat by Newt Gingrich in the January 22 South Carolina primary and his crushing 14.5-point victory in Florida on January 31. The Super PAC fired off $15.4 million on television and radio advertising in Florida, 92 percent of it negative. “Of all the spots that ran in Florida for the last week, 68 percent were attacks on Newt Gingrich,” The New York Times reported on primary day.