Within hours of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Electoral Commission, the New York Times predicted, 'The Supreme Court has handed lobbyists a new weapon. A lobbyist can now tell any elected official: if you vote wrong, my company, labor union or interest group will spend unlimited sums explicitly advertising against your re-election."
In the first Republican leadership race since Citizens United was passed, attack ads by independent groups known as Super PACs with vague names such as 'Americans for Prosperity' or 'Citizens for Working America' have dovetailed with an increase in donations from anonymous, often small roster of sources. This paper examines the advertising from the primaries to prove that the rise of Super PACs has meant an increase in negative television ads throughout the Republican primary and since it is harder for the pubic to know exactly who is funding them, this results in an increase in positive ads sponsored by candidates compared to the 2008 Republican primaries. Since Super PACs can now be outsourced to do the 'dirty work' in terms of negative tone, candidates must now recalibrate the viewers’ perception of them. This new realignment of political advertising in American will have effects to be studied in the Presidential campaign of 2012 and beyond.
