Two months ago, the Washington Post revealed that Mitt Romney’s presidential bid is largely fueled by Wall Street money, including major donors from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America.

Today, the former Massachusetts governor took a step that will undoubtedly make bankers happy, appointing the chairman of a Wall Street front group to his campaign. Romney tapped Norm Coleman, the former Minnesota senator and current chairman of the Board of the American Action Network, to be his “special adviser for policy.”

As ThinkProgress has written in the past, the American Action Network (AAN) is a front group funded by conservative Wall Street moneymen, including Robert Steel, Ken Langone, and Fred Malek. Because of its seemingly limitless money supply, the AAN was the second biggest outside spending groups in the 2010 election, dropping $26 million in support of conservative candidates.

The AAN has a troubled history in its year-and-a-half existence. Local Fox affiliates refused to air some of their health reform ads, calling the commercials’ claims “unsubstantiated.” The group ran an ad comparing Sen. Patty Murray’s (D-WA) vote in favor of CHIP — a children’s health insurance program — to stomping on children, a parallel AAN was unable to defend under questioning from ThinkProgress. This year, they are under fire for likely skirting tax law by focusing predominantly on political campaign activity, despite regulations regarding the group’s tax-exempt status.

With Coleman’s appointment to Romney’s campaign, the former Massachusetts governor won’t have to wait for the results of the 2012 election to put smiles on the faces of his Wall Street backers. Couple today’s move with Romney’s kowtowing on scrapping financial reform legislation — he regularly attacks the Dodd-Frank law and has even said he’s open to repealing the landmark financial reform legislation — and onlookers could be forgiven for believing that Wall Street is receiving handsome dividends for its investment in Romney.

Yesterday morning, the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Factcheck.org hosted “Cash Attack 2010,” a discussion about political advertising in the 2010 midterm elections. One panel featured an assortment of Republican strategists, including Carl Forti, the director of the Karl Rove front group American Crossroads, and Rob Collins, a former aide to Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) who now leads the Wall Street-funded group called American Action Forum. American Action Forum claims to be a policy think tank, but it spends much of its money on busing volunteers to help Republican candidates, airing attack ads on television and radio against Democrats, and engaging in other partisan activities. Along with the two tax entities of American Crossroads, AAN spent over $70 million helping to elect Republicans in 2010.

Collins used his time during the panel to explain that AAN played a pivotal role “expanding the playing field” for Republicans to gain additional seats by supplementing the campaign expenditures of candidates and party committees. One of the American Action Forum ads Collins highlighted was called “Ouch,” an early attack commercial against Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA). The ad depicted Murray wearing her famous tennis shoes stepping through the mud and then literally stomping on the backs of a man and two children. The citation list that backed up the message for the ad claimed that Murray was stepping on children because she voted for H.R. 2, an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

Yesterday, ThinkProgress asked Collins to justify how voting to provide children with health insurance is related to stepping on the backs of children. Collins stammered repeatedly before eventually mumbling that SCHIP decreases “opportunity”:

TP: I saw the Patty Murray tennis shoes ad, and when I saw the ad go up, I saw the citation back up that you put up to source your claims in that ad. For when you have Patty Murray stepping on the child, I saw the citation was her vote for SCHIP. As someone who leads an allegedly serious policy think tank, can you explain how stepping on a child is akin to voting for health insurance for children?

COLLINS: Um, can you summarize your question? You kind of had a long line there.

TP: The summary is, your ad had Patty Murray stepping on a child, and the back up claim for that ad in the citation was that she voted for SCHIP. Can you explain how stepping on a child, or voting for SCHIP is akin to stepping on a child?

COLLINS: Well you’re clearly trying to make a point and I appreciate that point and we have a different point of view.

TP: As the leader of a policy think tank, could you explain that to me?

COLLINS: Our point of view is government decreases the ability for this company, for this country to have um, economic freedom. This ad was about small business and as you increase the size of government, you decrease opportunity. When you’re — I mean you’ll have to forgive me, you’re talking about an ad. We did 53 individual ads.

TP: You featured the ad, you’re pretty proud of it in the newsreel, but you don’t want to explain that at all?

Watch it:

The SCHIP bill Murray voted for provided health insurance for four million children.

Just two weeks after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of opening the floodgates of corporate donations into electoral politics, a class of Wall Street Republicans have assembled around a new GOP group that aims to capitalize on corporate America’s empowerment. According to The New York Times, the group aims to “develop and market conservative ideas…hoping to capitalize on the fundraising and electioneering possibilities opened up by a recent Supreme Court ruling.” “This administration as well as Citizens United — when you combine the two the prospects for funding these types of efforts are greatly enhanced,” said former senator Norm Coleman, one of the group’s organizers.

The Republican figures behind the American Action Network have a long history and symbiotic relationship with Wall Street. Here’s a breakdown of the key players in the group:

The Wall Street Republicans behind American Action Network

Robert K. Steel
Former Goldman Sachs Exec & Wachovia CEO
Robert Steel spent close to 30 years with Goldman Sachs before joining his Goldman colleague Henry Paulson in the Treasury Department. Steel and Paulson helped ensure that Bush’s 2008 Wall Street bailout would leave Goldman “among the biggest beneficiaries of the $700 billion U.S. plan.”

Kenneth Langone
Home Depot Founder, Investment Banker
Wall Street titan Kenneth Langone was called “The Man Behind Grasso’s Payday” after NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso was awarded $139.5 million amidst controversy over Wall Street excesses in 2004. Langone, chair of the compensation committee, defended the exuberant pay, arguing that Grasso was entitled to the amount. Then-NY AG Eliot Spitzer filed a lawsuit against the NYSE — including Langone — charging that “the board of the NYSE was misled about parts” of Grasso’s compensation. In 2004, a businessman in Florida also sued Langone for $1.8 billion. The suit charged him with “conspiring to interfere and interfering with business relationships,” as well as “extortion, defamation, fraudulent misrepresentation, and violations of the Florida Antitrust Act and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act.”

Ed Gillespie
Fmr RNC Chairman, Lobbyist
Ed Gillespie’s lobbying firm includes a host of clients whose interests are grounded in Wall Street: Enron, Citibank, Bank of America, Zurich Financial, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the “clean coal” front group ACCCE.

Fred Malek
Thayer Capital Partners Founder
Fred Malek is a super-wealthy Republican operative who got his start with the Nixon administration. The former co-owner of the Texas Rangers with George W. Bush was responsible for a 1972 scheme that was investigated by the Senate Watergate Committee to politicize broad segments of the federal government in favor of reelecting Nixon. In 2004, Malek “was fined $250,000 for what the SEC called a ‘fraudulent scheme.’”

It is clear that the parties involved in forming the American Action Network all have a history of fighting for pro-corporate policies. Malek already summed up what we can expect from the group going into the future: “My strength is loyalty, my downfall is loyalty.”