Rep. Allen West (R-FL)

The ad, released by a group called the American Sunrise PAC, is narrated by a woman who criticizes West’s voting record on Medicare, women’s health care and taxes for the middle class. Each point is punctuated by a caricature of West in boxing gloves punching out voters. Watch the ad below:

West responded to the ad yesterday, calling it “reprehensible,” and adding that “it cheapens the very real and tragic occurrences of violence against women and seniors.”

Most troubling though are the racial undertones of the ad, which only distracts from the very legitimate criticism of West’s extreme voting record in Congress.

The ad also serves as a reminder of the effects that the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling has had on electoral politics. The rise of outside groups like the American Sunrise PAC has allowed well-funded donors to circumvent campaign finance limits to finance irresponsible ads like this, with little accountability for their contents. West’s Democratic opponent Patrick Murphy has so far offered no comment on the ad other than to say his campaign does not respond to third-party ads, though disclosure forms show that Murphy’s father is the single largest contributor to the PAC responsible for the ad.

Cable news is giving a controversial new ad attacking Romney an unintentional bump in visibility. Priorities USA, the super PAC supporting Barack Obama, released “Understands” on Tuesday in just five battleground states: Florida, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Ohio. But the spot, which controversially links the death of the wife of a laid off steelworker to Romney’s actions as CEO of Bain Capital, quickly went national when cable news shows replayed the ad 60 times in two days.

Priorities USA spent slightly more than a million dollars on TV ads this month. “Understands” is its fifth ad in a campaign focusing on Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital. It features former GST Steel worker Joe Soptic, who describes how his wife died after they lost their health insurance.

Watch it:

Romney’s campaign called the ad “dishonest” and “contemptible.” Mark Halperin of Time Magazine lamented, “It seems that for some Democrats, given the attacks the President has taken, nothing is out of bounds in going after Romney at this point.”

Sensing controversy, cable news outlets replayed the ad, by ThinkProgress’ estimate, 60 times in two days. Fox News and Fox Business provided the bulk of the coverage, mentioning and playing clips of the ad 26 times since Tuesday. CNN and MSNBC played it 15 and 12 times respectively.

Priorities USA senior strategist Bill Burton told the Huffington Post that “Understands” has been “wildly successful” in focusing the conversation on Romney’s impact on the middle class. And the super PAC is getting far more bang for its buck thanks to the free media coverage.

To put the Priorities USA ad buy in perspective, conservative outside groups spent $144 million on swing state TV ads as of the third week in July. Democratic groups, led by Priorities USA, have spent $20 million.

The success of “Understands” can be read as a lesson to future political campaigns: launch hyperbolic attacks on your opponent, and the media will reward you with millions of dollars in free air time.

Stephen Marks

FightBigotry.com’s founder and treasurer is Stephen Marks, a well-known Republican opposition researcher whose 2008 book Confessions of a Political Hitman detailed his work in what he called “the dark side of politics.” In 2000, he launched an attack ad under the misleading name “Americans Against Hate,” attempting to tie Al Gore to controversial comments by Rev. Al Sharpton. Another Marks spot in 2004 attempted to link John Kerry to convicted murderer Willie Horton. He was forced to retract a claim in the book about then-Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ), acknowledging that “the information was not accurate.”

A two-minute version of the new spot is already available on the group’s website, though the group promises a one-minute version is forthcoming. In it, he says:

The Obama administration has injected race into the presidential campaign. Obama Attorney General Eric Holder recently said – with no argument from the president – that their white critics are motivated by race. Implying whites are too stupid to have honest disagreements with the president without being racist is in-and-of-itself racist against whites, reinforcing Mr. Obama’s disturbing pattern of tacitly defending black racism. …

Obama’s attorney general said pursuing the New Black Panthers does a great disservice to whose “who risked all, for my people.” So it’s okay for his people to commit racial crimes? In 2009, President Obama defended his friend Henry Louis Gates after a racist altercation with police, telling a white officer he wouldn’t speak to him but would speak to his mama. Mr. Obama’s response? “The Cambridge police acted stupidly.” …

Mr. President, you ran as the candidate of change. But one thing has not changed—your tacit defense of racism against white folks, despite receiving nearly half the white vote to win the presidency.

Watch it here:

Beyond the obvious race-baiting, the ad is riddled with factual errors. Holder’s March 2011 statement was criticizing a Congressman for equating an a 2008 New Black Panther Party incident with the much more violent assaults against voting rights advocates in the 1960s – not about “pursuing the New Black Panthers.”

And what this group terms a “racist altercation with police” involved a Harvard University professor being stopped by police for trying to enter his own home. Even conservative Fox News legal analyst and former New Jersey state Judge Andrew Napolitano called it an “improper arrest.”

In 2008, Marks said that he was “retiring from politics.” Sadly, he’s back to his old tricks — using an Orwellian name to inject racism into yet another campaign through smears.

Have you eaten at White Castle recently? Or caught a movie at Regal Cinemas?

If so, you may be unwittingly helping finance right-wing attack ads.

That’s because many of the country’s most common brands are run by rich conservatives who are using their personal wealth to bankroll outside spending groups that are running attack ads smearing progressives. From Marriott Hotels to Brawny paper towels, and from the Los Angeles Lakers to the Coachella music festival, corporate executives at these organizations have given millions of dollars to groups like Mitt Romney’s Super PAC Restore Our Future.

Some corporations, like Waffle House, give direct donations to conservative attack ad groups like Karl Rove’s American Crossroads.

The following list of consumer brands either have leaders who wrote checks to outside right-wing attack ad groups or gave money directly from the corporation. Only entities that gave $25,000 or more were included in this guide.

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