Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Politico:

The day after the Senate voted to condemn MoveOn.org for its full-page New York Times ad attacking General David Petraeus, a coalition of conservative organizations met to plot their next move.

Brad Blakeman, head of the new group Freedom’s Watch, proposed another full page ad in the paper of record. But he suggested taking on a slightly less risky target than an active four-star general: the Iranian president.

“Ahmadinejad Is a Terrorist,” blared the resulting creation.

It was turned around quickly, landing in reporters’ in-boxes the evening of Friday, Sept. 21—a good way to get it ignored. Still, it got play on FOX News, CNN, and other cable outlets, and was a topic of discussion on conservative talk radio, which remains a powerful medium. Not bad for $64,575.

As part of a $15 million campaign, the group also produced several 30-second videos, including one that features a disabled Iraq War veteran speaking out against troop withdrawals.

Freedom’s Watch was founded in July with MoveOn in mind. “Quite frankly, Moveon.org promised an Iraqi summer,” said Blakeman, a former aide to President Bush., explaining that the group was the brainchild of a collection of conservatives seeking to counter the liberal group.

Former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer; Matt Brooks, head of the Republican Jewish Coalition and the Jewish Policy Center; and Mel Sembler, a generous Florida-based donor and former ambassador to Italy, were among the intellectual founders of Freedom’s Watch.

Its list of benefactors reads like a Who’s Who of the Republican Party. Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson was listed by Forbes magazine in 2006 as the third richest man in America, with an estimated fortune of $20.5 billion. He hosted a fundraiser with Vice President Dick Cheney in Las Vegas on Thursday and has given heavily to GOP House candidates as well as to President Bush and the party.

The $15 million ad campaign largely targeted moderate Republicans in swing districts. The same donors also contributed individually to some of those same members—an interesting carrot-and-stick approach that combines pressure as well as support for would-be deserters from Bush’s war policy.

Blakeman, a GOP donor himself, said the activists saw an opportunity. “There was a void in the conservative movement, in that the movement would rise and fall with the election cycle,” he said.

Freedom’s Watch is using the Iraq war as an issue to rally around, but has longer-term goals. “Why don’t we form a never-ending campaign that’s run like a business, but managed like a campaign? We’ll take on generational issues that are unsolvable in any one election cycle, but we’ll seek to influence those issues over time,” said Blakeman. To emphasize the business-nature of the organization, Blakeman’s title is “President and CEO” on a recent letter to Congress.

The group has spent most of the $15 million it reserved for a national advertising campaign and is now gearing up to launch its second phase. Blakeman wouldn’t give specifics but said that the next phase would be “robust” and that “the next big challenge will be the defense authorization bill”—a reference to the coming debate in Congress over the funding of the war.

Tom Matzzie, head of the MoveOn-backed anti-war coalition Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, is unimpressed so far.

“Every extra minute of TV time talking about Iraq is another drip, drip, drip of bad news for politicians who won’t break with Bush. So, thanks,” he wrote in an open letter to Ari Fleischer. Matzzie explained that Fleischer’s involvement in the group made it easy for people to see a connection between it and the White House.

Indeed, when Blakeman met with a reporter at a coffee shop near the White House, he was carrying a leather-looking folder embossed with the White House insignia on its cover.

Politically, the group is doing about as well as it could hope, said Blakeman. “It’s beyond my wildest dreams that we’d have the effect we’ve had on the debate,” he said, adding that the organization will soon be moving into 10,000 square feet of office space in Washington and expanding its staff to more than 50.

“Any time you have an articulate voice helping to make the case, you are tremendously advantaged. And in the case of the report that General Petraeus put forward, and the stakes in Iraq, they’ve been an unbelievably articulate and compelling force,” said Ken Mehlman, President Bush’s 2004 campaign manager.

In a letter sent Thursday to every member of Congress, Freedom’s Watch, a registered 501(c)4—an organization that may lobby but cannot coordinate with any political party—touts what it sees as two of these early successes.

“Freedoms Watch stood up to MoveOn.org” and “Freedom’s Watch stood up to the New York Times,” boasts the letter, naming two of the right’s favorite punching bags. The former claim centers on that famous Times ad and credits the conservative coalition with pressuring Congress to pass a resolution condemning it. The latter notch on the post refers to a column by the Times’ ombudsman faulting his paper for giving MoveOn an unfair discount.

“But for us, it wouldn’t have happened,” said Blakeman of ombudsman Clark Hoyt’s column. Indeed, Hoyt writes in the piece that “FreedomsWatch.org, a group recently formed to support the war, asked me to investigate because it said it wasn’t offered the same terms for a response ad that MoveOn.org got.”

Blakeman takes the credit a step further, arguing that his group compelled MoveOn to panic and produce the ad in the first place. The $15 million ad campaign, Blakeman contended, “forced them to make a hard left, and that’s why they did the Petraeus ad.”

The new prominence has also brought criticism, particularly for ads that imply a connection between the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and the invasion of Iraq. Blakemen responded that the ad is factually accurate. “We’re not suggesting that Iraq was responsible for that,” he said, but rather that al Qaeda attacked the U.S. and is now in Iraq. “It’s the same enemy.”

In the video ad now playing on YouTube, Iraq war vet John Kriesel says, “They attacked us, and they will again,” while an image of the World Trade Center fills the screen. He then says, “They won’t stop in Iraq.” While technically accurate, it doesn’t take a Madison Avenue advertising exec to get the point.

Making that connection—between Iraq and a global war on terror—is crucial to the Freedom’s Watch argument. “I’m not so sure that the majority of the public prior to us coming to the scene had a true indication of the facts and circumstances, had an understanding this is a broader war, a global war on terror,” said Blakeman.

A problem for Freedom’s Watch, though, is that that argument has already been made often by President Bush. “They did have the biggest megaphone in the country making the case repeatedly. After awhile the facts got in the way,” said Jim Gerstein, executive director of the liberal Democracy Corps, which does national survey research. “I’d say [the public does] understand it very well. After giving the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt for a long time, the public turned and hasn’t come back.”