Remind Me: Who's the Party of Special Interests and Big Money, Again?

So far, the latest figures show that the Democratic Party machinery has outraised its Republican counterpart in this campaign cycle by almost $270 million.

And even when outside spending on television advertising and direct mail is added to the mix, Republicans still haven’t closed the gap.

The money race totals come to $856 million for the Democratic committees and their aligned outside groups, compared to $677 for their Republican adversaries, based on figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

...We find that Democrats and Republicans are airing similar proportions of negative (and positive) spots in federal races.  However, there is one crucial difference: Democrats are using personal attacks at much higher rates than Republicans.  In 2010, pro-Democratic ad sponsors focused on the personal characteristics of Republican candidates in 21% of their attack ads.   Republicans have mentioned candidate characteristics in 11 percent of their attack ads this year.

Democrats raised far more money from political action committees this past election than Republicans did, even counting the new "Super PACs" President Obama claimed were giving the GOP a corporate-funded unfair advantage.

Final campaign finance figures from the Federal Election Commission have come in, and they show a very different picture from the one painted by Obama and most of the media. The Democrats' advantage in money from traditional PACs was just about 10 times the size of the Republicans' advantage from the new Super PACs.