U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (Photo: Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.com)

Iowa’s senior senator is the ranking minority member of the Senate Finance Committee, putting him in a powerful position to shape any bill put forward to remake the country’s ailing health care system. It also puts him in the crosshairs of interest groups pushing for passage of a bill that includes a government-run insurance option, something Grassley has vowed to oppose.

Grassley has made a career out of preaching bipartisanship and taking on causes with broad appeal, such as financial corruption and government waste.

Over the years, he has cultivated an aura of invincibility across Iowa. He has rarely faced a difficult re-election campaign in his nearly three decades in office, and recent polling makes him a safe bet to win again in 2010.

Groups like MoveOn.org and Health Care for America Now, which support a public health insurance option, have been trying to pressure Grassley for months, attending his town halls, calling his office and pushing him to back away from his opposition. But can these groups really have an impact on an elected official who is widely considered unbeatable?

The key, leaders say, is convincing Grassley that he is not representing his constituents. Even if Grassley is likely to win re-election, activists hope that he still pays attention to the interests and opinions of voters.

“I give Sen. Grassley enough credit that I don’t think his sole motivation is re-election,” said Ben Allen, an Iowa organizer for the liberal group MoveOn.org. “I do think he tries to represent the best interest of Iowans. And he does listen to constituents. So if we can convince him that enough of his constituents want this and believe it is good for Iowans, he’ll move toward Iowans. I just don’t see him has a cold politician that only wants to get re-elected. Even if he is invulnerable politically, I don’t think that means he won’t change his mind.”

Groups like Health Care for America Now, a coalition of more than 1,000 progressive and labor groups representing 30 million people, have organized petition drives, put together public rallies and purchased advertising on television and radio with the hope of convincing Grassley that Iowans support a public option. According to a poll conducted by The Des Moines Register earlier this year,56 percent of Iowans support creation of a public plan, compared with just 37 percent who oppose the idea.

“We really respect Sen. Grassley as someone who listens to his constituents and who does what Iowans want,” said Sue Dinsdale, an organizer with Iowa Citizens Action Network (ICAN), which is affiliated with the Health Care for America Now Campaign. “It feels like on this issue, he just hasn’t quite gotten it yet. I think if we keep reminding him that this is what Iowans want he could still change his mind.”

The spotlight on Grassley will only grow brighter in the weeks and months ahead, as the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee passed sweeping health care legislation Wednesday, putting the ball squarely in the court of the Finance Committee. It has jurisdiction over how to pay for health care reform, can write tax legislation, and has authority over Medicare and Medicaid.

Grassley’s decision to position himself as the face of the opposition to a public option may not cost him re-election, but it could still hurt him politically, said Amy Logsdon, program director for ICAN.

“People could see a disconnect between the popular perception of Charles Grassley as the advocate of the people and this person who is now not acting in our best interest,” she said. “If he doesn’t change, I think this issue is important enough and on the radar of the average Iowan enough, that it could have an impact on his perception in the state.”

Whether or not he ever reverses course to support a public option, Logsdon said organizations like ICAN will continue to pressure Grassley, if for no other reason than to signal to opponents around the country that are vulnerable that they mean business.

“Actions have consequences, and whether or not we will persuade him to change his mind and whether or not what we say creates some political opportunity in the future in Iowa, we need for his remarks on a national stage that are hostile to the position of the people of his home state to be answered,” she said. “We need his colleagues from around the country to realize that this is what happens when you don’t listen to the voice of the people.”

The full MoveOn.org press release is copied below.

A new 30 second television ad, running in Iowa, Montana and Washington, DC, uses humor to highlight the importance of including the choice of a public health insurance plan in any health care reform legislation. The ad, by MoveOn.org Civic Action, follows an online town hall meeting on the subject Monday night that over 10,000 people participated in – the highest attendance ever recorded by sister organization Moveon.org Political Action for an issue briefing. The ads will run in the home states of the chair and the ranking Republican of the Senate Finance Committee, as well as in Washington, DC, for one week. The public health insurance option has been vigorously opposed by the insurance industry and their allies in Congress.

Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) has recently shown a willingness to support the public health insurance option, while Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) remains dead set against it, despite the fact that a recent poll showed that 56% of Iowans want a public health insurance option.[1] The Iowa results mirror polls that show most Americans believe the choice of a public health insurance plan is key to solving our health care crisis.

The television ad, set in a funeral home, uses humor and shows two funeral directors discussing how President Obama’s health care reform proposal, with its inclusion of the choice of a public health insurance plan, will lower people’s health care costs and let them live longer, therefore putting the funeral directors out of business.

“While our ad uses humor to elevate the importance of the public health insurance option, the point couldn’t be more serious,” said Justin Ruben, Executive Director of MoveOn. “Senators Baucus and Grassley are at the center of the fight for real health care reform. They have a responsibility to stand with the overwhelming majority of Americans who want the choice of a public health insurance plan – but instead, Senator Grassley and Congressional Republicans have been standing with the insurance companies and special interests.”

The ad campaign follows Monday night’s online town hall meeting on the subject. The town hall was hosted jointly by MoveOn.org Political Action and Democracy for America. The town hall, which over 10,000 people attended, was featured Governor Howard Dean explaining the public health insurance option and taking questions from the on line crowd.

You can hear the town hall at: http://pol.moveon.org/deanforum/recording.html

The ad is viewable online here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms2b57MLqZs

The American Future fund has been tied to the 1988 "Willie Horton" ad and the 2004 "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" ads. (Sources: AmericanFutureFund.com, Wikipedia, SwiftVets.com)

The American Future Fund (AFF), operating out of Des Moines, is sponsoring advocacy advertisements in closely contested congressional races from New York to Louisiana to Minnesota and Colorado. It is one of the most ambitious conservative independent expenditure groups to emerge in 2008. Most observers expect AFF to begin increasing its role in elections around the country, stoking speculation that it will spend heavily to prop up lightly funded Republican campaign committees.

Because of the way the group is organized under Internal Revenue Service guidelines for nonprofit organizations it does not have to disclose its donors and is not governed by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

But an Iowa Independent investigation has found the group has deep roots in state Republican politics. And, unlike MoveOn.org, a similar group advocating liberal causes, it’s hard to determine who is actually behind the AFF. The key players include:

Nicole Schlinger, the group’s president, the former executive director of the Republican Party of Iowa.

Tim Albrecht, a former spokesman for Republicans in the Iowa House who worked for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign and spent a short time this year working for the Republican Party of Iowa, is the group’s communications director.

David Kochel, another former state GOP executive director and a senior adviser to the Romney campaign, who has served as spokesman for AFF, although Albrecht said he is no longer associated with the group.

The Washington Post reported in March — and Albrecht confirmed to Iowa Independent — that Ben Ginsberg, of the high-powered D.C. law firm Patton Boggs, is the group’s legal counsel. Ginsberg resigned as chief outside counsel to the Bush-Cheney campaign in August 2004 when it was revealed that he was also providing advice to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that sponsored error-laden attacks on the military service record of 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

Larry McCarthy, president of D.C.-based media firm McCarthy Marcus Hennings, is AFF’s media strategist. In 1988, McCarthy produced the infamous, racially tinged Willie Horton television ad that helped then-Vice President George H.W. Bush bury Michael Dukakis under charges that he was soft on crime.

Public records show the AFF also has connections to Iowa businessman Bruce Rastetter, who is widely believed to be considering a run for governor in 2010. Rastetter is a regular donor to the Republican Party and founder of Hawkeye Renewables, the fourth largest ethanol producer in the nation. Eric Peterson, business manager at Summit Farms, another of Rastetter’s companies, is listed on documents filed with the Iowa Secretary of State’s office as president, secretary and director of Iowa Future Fund, a conservative nonprofit that essentially morphed into American Future Fund.

The address listed on an AFF ad buy in Minnesota is a post office box used by Nick Ryan, a Des Moines lobbyist who works primarily for Rastetter’s companies and who served as campaign manager for 2006 Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Nussle. In February, Ryan was acting as spokesman for Hawkeye Renewables when 29,000 gallons of ethanol was accidentally spilled at the company’s Iowa Falls plant.

The many faces of AFF

The Iowa Future Fund, technically the first incarnation of AFF, gained public attention in March when it ran a series of television and radio ads accusing Gov. Chet Culver of increasing spending by 20 percent over the past two years and raising taxes and fees by $100 million.

“Culver raises taxes and spends more money and wants to use your tax dollars to benefit Microsoft,” the ad’s narrator said, referring to a tax package that Culver backed and that the legislature passed geared to lure companies like Microsoft Corp. and Google to the state.

The Iowa Democratic Party filed a complaint with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board to determine whether the ads constituted political advertising, which would require disclosure of the group’s donors.

Charlie Smithson, executive director of the Iowa Ethics Campaign and Disclosure Board, said the complaint has not yet been fully settled.

“It is still under investigation,” he said. “The determination was made that it did not violate the state campaign laws because it did not ‘expressly advocate’ for or against Gov. Culver or a clearly identified candidate for office. The issue the Board is now looking at is whether any of the state lobbying laws were triggered.”

The next Ethics Board meeting is Aug. 28.

In April, Iowa Future Fund effectively split into two groups: AFF, which focuses on federal races around the country, and the Iowa Progress Project, which puts its resources toward state issues.

Albrecht said AFF and Iowa Future Fund “are completely unrelated.” But they share an organizational history. AFF and IFF were incorporated on the same day by the same Virginia law firm. David Kochel served for a time as spokesman for IFF and AFF before becoming president of Iowa Progress Project.

In March, an ad run by AFF in the race between Democrat Al Franken and Republican Sen. Norm Coleman for Minnesota’s U.S. Senate seat caused the state’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party to file a formal complaint with the FEC alleging that the group violated federal election law and that its ads constitute blatant electoral advocacy.

“The American Future Fund is a shadowy nonprofit organization,” the complaint said. “It purports to be exempt from tax under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. But its notion of ‘promoting the social welfare’ is to send valentines to electorally troubled Republican Senate candidates. The Commission should take immediate steps to enforce the law and expose this group’s secret financing to light of day.”

Under federal election law, the organization is prohibited from engaging solely in “express advocacy,” which would include asking voters to vote for or against a certain candidate. But so long as the ad hasn’t been coordinated with a campaign and doesn’t outright say “œvote for” or “vote against,” it is not considered express advocacy, according to Paul S. Ryan, FEC program director for the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington, D.C.-based organization.

“An organization that is careful about how it writes the script of its ad can fly under the radar or stay outside of the net of campaign finance activity,” he said.

The ad in question didn’t ask voters to vote for Coleman, but rather asked voters to “call Norm Coleman and thank him for his agenda for Minnesota.”

In 2004, several groups filed complaints against so-called independent expenditure committees saying they ignored campaign finance law. It took the FEC two years to rule on the complaints. In the end, the groups had to pay less than 2 percent of the fund they illegally raised and spent.

Brad Smith, a former chairman of the FEC and currently a professor of law at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio, said that if a group’s “major purpose” is not trying to affect elections, “they are not regulated by the FEC.” But Smith added the definition of “major purpose” is not clear, which could open the door for some nonprofit groups to face a challenge on their tax status.

“I think there would be an opening for someone who wanted to prosecute a group who is spending millions of dollars on advertising,” said Smith, a Republican who has been a vocal critic of campaign finance reform.

Albrecht said there is no validity to claims that AFF is anything but an issues-focused organization.

“We are an issues organization,” he said. “That is evident by the things that are prominently displayed on our Web site and in our work.”

Ads without expenditures

Since running the Coleman ad in Minnesota, AFF has been busy.

In July, ran radio ads in Nevada, asking voters to “call [Democratic] Sen. Harry Reid and tell him to allow a vote” on expanded domestic oil drilling.

Also in July, it ran radio ads asking Colorado voters to call U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, and “tell him to stop delaying energy exploration.” Last week, AFF launched a television ad critical of Udall’s stance on domestic oil exploration.

The group also released a series of three Web ads, asking voters to call U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., to tell them they “shouldn’t get sweetheart deals,” referring to accusations that they profited from the mortgage crisis.

In May, AFF officially filed a statement of organization for its own political action committee, called American Future Fund Political Action. Ryan said this is a standard procedure for many nonprofits as it allows them to solicit donations for exclusively “express advocacy” work.

The AFF PAC has used YouTube to distribute a series of ads against Franken in Minnesota (in May), Senate Majority Leader Reid in Nevada (in June), U.S. Rep. William Jefferson and U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu in Louisiana (in May and July), and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama (in May).

However, according to reports filed with the FEC on July 13, the group has raised no money and has had no expenditures, a fact that Ryan called “odd.”

Albrecht said AFF is simply a reaction to liberal groups like MoveOn.org who have dominated this realm of politics for years.

“For far too long the left has been on the field with no opposition,” he said. “American Future Fund has said it’s time to play ball. We’re not going to sit on the sidelines any longer. It’s important for free market, conservative principles to be highlighted in public, and that’s what we intend to do.”

The difference is that MoveOn.org, a decade-old liberal group, identifies its leadership on its Web site, boasts more than a million members and never shies away from the spotlight as a means for amplifying its message. AFF is decidedly lower-profile, disclosing nothing about its leaders, history or membership on its Web site, and it makes little or no effort on public appearances, press conferences and media bookings.

The potential impact that groups like AFF could have on this year’s elections will be difficult to gauge until the votes are in on Election Day. In 2006, independent expenditure committees for both parties spent about $430 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Despite objections to such groups from both major parties’ presumptive nominees for president, many experts expect that number to be higher this year.

To view selected ads from the American Future Fund, click here.

Despite their intention to up the ante on meaningful discussion on the Iraq war, MoveOn’s ad in the New York Times, ironically, served to feed the GOP’s bait-and-switch machine. The GOP, having mastered the art of bait-and-switch under Karl Rove’s helm, succeeded in making the discussion all about the ad itself, rather than about the validity of Petraus’ report, which the ad was attempting to call into question. In doing so, the GOP dodged another bullet in being answerable for the war in Iraq. MoveOn is not to blame, however, for it was up to the Democratic Party whether they would take the bait from the Republicans. The Democrats took the bait-hook, line, and sinker.

A resolution denouncing the MoveOn ad not only made it to the Democratic-controlled Senate floor, it was actually debated for an hour before it passed 72-25. It’s moments like these that make me wonder, who’s controlling whom? Has Democratic control joined the ranks of other political oxymorons, such as campaign finance reform and political accountability?Even former president Bill Clinton had something to say about the recent bait-and-switch tactics implored by the GOP.

Bill Clinton on CNN: “Bait-and-Switch”

Given the monumental distractions surrounding the Monica Lewinsky scandal and President Clinton’s subsequent impeachment, Clinton should know a thing or two about the GOP’s bait-and-switch powers.

And now, Rush Limbaugh has inadvertently perpetuated the growing distractions by dropping a “phony soldiers” bomb on Iraq veterans during his radio show. Following is the transcript of Limbaugh’s comments with a caller on his program on Wednesday:

LIMBAUGH: There’s a lot more than that that they don’t understand. They can’t even–if– the next guy that calls here, I’m gonna ask him: Why should we pull–what is the imperative for pulling out? What’s in it for the United States to pull out? They can’t–I don’t think they have an answer for that other than, “Well, we just gotta bring the troops home.”

CALLER 2: Yeah, and, you know what-

LIMBAUGH: “Save the-keep the troops safe” or whatever. I-it’s not possible, intellectually, to follow these people.

CALLER 2: No, it’s not, and what’s really funny is, they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.

LIMBAUGH: The phony soldiers.

Iraq veterans and veterans’ groups have already taken action condemning Limbaugh’s remarks as they called for congressional Republicans to denounce Rush Limbaugh. In Iowa, the group “Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq” issued a press release calling for Iowa’s Republican congressional members, Sen. Chuck Grassley and Rep. Tom Latham, to publicly denounce Limbaugh’s remark. (Rep. Steve King, the other Republican member of Iowa’s delegation, was not targeted in the campaign.)

“I served my country for five years in the Army Corp. of Engineers. I’m proud to have served and support the brave men and women in Iraq today. I know the tremendous strain the Iraq war is placing on our military, and I believe we need to come to some logical conclusion about responsibly pulling out of Iraq,” Jesse Dinsdale, an Iraq War veteran, said in the release. “For Rush Limbaugh–a man that has never put on a uniform, much less gone to war — to call people like myself ‘phony soldiers’ is absurd… The war in Iraq has gone on for too long, and our troops and their families have sacrificed too much. Rush Limbaugh can talk all he wants about ’supporting the troops,’ but this isn’t support. It’s offensive to all of our nation’s soldiers and veterans, and Rush Limbaugh owes them an apology.”

Fat chance. The likelihood of Rush Limbaugh ever apologizing for something emitted from his mouth is about as likely as President Bush publicly apologizing for his Iraq War policy blunders and/or admitting he had made some egregious errors in implementing his war strategy. (For starters, I can’t even begin to imagine Bush pronouncing “egregious.”) This is one of the underlying reasons the GOP bait-and-switch machine has been so effective: discipline.

The GOP Fight Club has four primary rules they follow when engaging in distraction warfare:

First Rule: Never talk about GOP Fight Club.

Second Rule: Stay on the offensive.

Third Rule: When counterattacked, never admit you’re wrong.

Fourth Rule: When presented with overwhelming evidence proving that you’re wrong, review rules two and three.

It’s completely understandable that Iraq veterans would be upset by being called “phony soldiers.” This should be offensive to all veterans and non-veterans as well. Sure, the first instinct is to fight back, as did VoteVets.org, the largest political group of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. VoteVets released an internet-only ad targeting Limbaugh for his “phony soldier” comment and exposing his hypocrisy in the process.

“Rush Limbaugh has insulted the majority of U.S. troops and veterans, who believe that we are on the wrong course in Iraq,” Jon Soltz, Iraq War veteran and chair of VoteVets.org. said in a press release. “Their sacrifice is very real. The wounds many sustained are very real. The limbs they lost are very real. And their view that George W. Bush has this policy wrong is very real. The only phony here is Rush Limbaugh, who seems to think that he can pass judgment on us, when he’s never had the guts to wear the uniform.”

True, these Iraq veterans’ honor has been attacked, and they should go after Limbaugh and hold him accountable for his on-the-air blathering. But dragging these political skirmishes on to the Senate floor only serves to distract Congress from what they should be doing–crafting, debating and enacting legislation that supports the troops not only when they are deployed, but also when they return from their deployment battle-scarred, both emotionally and physically. Congress should be fighting to send more MRAP vehicles and other supplies to soldiers in Iraq; passing Sen. Jim Webb’s, D-Va., amendment that provides more down time between deployments, enacting the Wounded Warriors Act, repealing the military’s discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy,” replacing discretionary funding for Veterans affairs with mandated funding