Free Republic

The Republican National Committee is on track to spend more than $100 million in the midterm campaign, with virtually every dime plowed into the party’s new digital voter-turnout program. If the program is effective, Republican campaigns will have access to a modern get-out-the-vote operation that has been the hallmark of the Democrats’ success in recent election cycles. But if it fails to deliver as advertised, Republican candidates will be stuck with another subpar voter turnout program and without the resources the GOP traditionally sent to their campaigns in midterm years. The RNC is set this week to announce the deployment...

Trumpeting the ever-increasing weight of outside political organizations, Karl Rove's campaign groups out-fundraised the Democratic National Committee during the 2012 election cycle, according to a draft tax return obtained Friday by the Wall Street Journal. American Crossroads and its nonprofit arm, Crossroads GPS, together raked in more than $325 million during the 2012 campaign. The DNC, by contrast, raised $316 million, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. -snip- Expenditures for Crossroads GPS included donations to other conservative groups like Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, and a $538,000 salary for its president, Steven Law.

The GOP is working with Silicon Valley investors to digitally target voters and donors in a broader effort by the Republican National Committee to revive the party. The venture, whose mission is still being refined, will create an interactive platform available to any GOP campaign to access the party's vast amount of data on voters. This platform will likely work in conjunction with the RNC's efforts to improve its own database of voter information. The venture is being backed by Karl Rove and fomer Bain & Co. executive and private equity investor Richard Boyce. Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy will...

In its fifth full week of programming (1/31-2/6), OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network was down 17% vs. last week with last week among women 25-54 in total day (40,000 vs. 48,000), and down 34% among women 25-54 in primetime (54,000 vs. 82,000).