In short order, American Crossroads had obtained commitments of about $30 million—nearly four times what the R.N.C. had in its coffers.

Meanwhile, Rove and Gillespie put Crossroads in a network with four other groups—the American Action Network, the American Action Forum, Resurgent Republic, and the Republican State Leadership Committee—as part of an immense fund-raising and advertising machine, separate from the Republican National Committee, to win back both Congress and the White House. Altogether, according to the National Journal, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS planned to spend $300 million to help scores of G.O.P. congres­sional candidates, especially in battleground states such as Florida, Colorado, Nevada, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. That was enough money to produce anti-Democratic attack ads that could run thousands of times, and to produce tens of millions of negative mail pieces and automated phone calls. Under the new laws, all of this could take place with virtually no oversight. It was implicit that the 2010 midterms were merely a dress rehearsal for the larger political goal of the 2012 presidential election, in which these same men would try to topple President Obama with a war chest that now approaches $1 billion. By contrast, John McCain spent $370 million on his entire presidential campaign.

Rove and Gillespie pitched American Crossroads as an analogue to opposing groups such as Democracy Alliance or labor unions, which had historically supported Democrats. “Where they have a chess piece on the board, we need a chess piece on the board,” said Gillespie, who has been involved in all five groups in roles ranging from board member to informal adviser.

But in fact, much more than that, American Crossroads was an alternative to the R.N.C., which had crumbled under the leadership of Michael Steele, who would leave the committee a few months after the 2010 midterms. “Karl set up a parallel organization,” says longtime G.O.P. political strategist Roger Stone. “The center of energy will always be where the money is. Karl is playing for control of the party. That’s where the power and the money is.”

WABC Radio talk-show host John Batchelor, a Republican, put it in perspective. “America is a two-party state,” he says. “There are the Democrats. Then, there’s Karl Rove.”

As the November 2, 2010, elections approached, Karl Rove had nearly completed a remarkable transformation. His political apparatus was fully funded and operational. His relationships with Fox News and The Wall Street Journal gave him a bully pulpit that allowed him to offer his own Rovian narrative at the same time as he manipulated events behind the scenes. Even Rove’s most astute observers, with few exceptions, had made one crucial miscalculation: given Rove’s close relationship with George W. Bush, they had assumed Rove’s mission to achieve a permanent Republican majority was a goal that had to be accomplished during the two George W. Bush terms. But he had always played the long game. Now America would find out if Karl Christian Rove could pull it off.

The Buyout

Tall and slender at 65, Mitt Romney has always looked presidential. With his chiseled jaw and helmet of charcoal hair flecked with gray, he is almost Reaganesque but has a stiffness in his bearing—an inescapable sense of detachment, the absence of the common touch.

Indeed, the Romney critique that stung most, especially in the context of high unemployment, was Mike Huckabee’s 2008 quip that, far from being the common man, Romney looks like “the guy who laid you off.” All of which raised questions about Romney’s wealth, how he earned it, and how that would play with the American electorate.

At Bain Capital, the Boston-based private-equity firm where he made his name, Romney had mastered the art of the leveraged buyout: making an offer for a company, putting down a fraction of the sale price, financing the rest, taking over the company, and then, after the company turned around, cashing out—often at a huge profit. His success was undeniable. Romney had done it again and again—with a medical-equipment company, with a credit-services company, with Domino’s Pizza. There were firms that succeeded as well as those that failed, costing workers their jobs while Bain took the profits. He had even saved his former consulting firm, Bain & Company, from bankruptcy. Over the years, he earned a personal fortune of more than $200 million. Given the sputtering state of the economy, the question was whether Romney would be seen as someone whose fiscal prowess could cure America’s economic ills. Or would he be seen as a remorseless corporate raider who took home millions while rapaciously cutting jobs?