American Crossroads Is Skeptical About Super PAC Coordination

American Crossroads released a video Friday calling on President Obama to repudiate a Priorities USA ad that links Mitt Romney to a woman's death from cancer, and in it, they show a lot of skepticism that the Obama campaign operates independently from the Priorities Super PAC.

American Crossroads released a video Friday calling on President Obama to repudiate a Priorities USA ad that links Mitt Romney to a woman's death from cancer, and in it, they show a lot of skepticism that the Obama campaign operates independently from the Priorities Super PAC. This seems like an objection that takes a lot of chutzpah coming as it does from a Super PAC.

The Crossroads ad shows Obama Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter defending herself against the widely criticized ad by noting that the campaign can't coordinate with Priorities USA. "Well, you do know that we don't have anything to do with Priorities USA. We're not allowed to coordinate with them." The ad then replays this Cutter quote with an ominous muffling effect while quotes flash on screen showing evidence of coordination between the two, like the fact that Obama officials have appeared at Priorities events.

Super PACs stake their legal existence on the idea that there isn't strategic coordination between them and campaigns, and American Crossroads is obviously not the first to express skepticism that this is always the case. For every time someone points out that Obama's advisor once appeared at a Priorities USA event, someone else points out that Karl Rove, head of American Crossroads (which made today's ad) attended a Romney campaign strategy session.

It seems that to a person immersed in this year's election news, claims that a campaign has coordinated with a Super PAC implicate the campaign finance rules that allow Super PACs to operate as much or more than they implicate a specific campaign  There are plenty of people calling on Obama to repudiate the ad simply because they think it crosses a line. So for a Super PAC to pick non-coordination as the reason Obama should repudiate it seems like an odd tactic.

Here's the ad Crossroads wants Obama to criticize: