Axelrod: Handful of plutocrats trying to buy this government

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod said Wednesday that billionaires were trying to buy the United States government in the November elections.

“There was a report this morning that the Republican Super PACs, apart from Romney and apart from his own super PAC, intend to spend a billion dollars in this campaign setting up shadow state organizations—district-wide organizations—as well as running media,” he told Current TV host Jennifer Granholm.

“So a handful of plutocrats of billionaires with a special interest agenda are going to try and buy this government in this election, and the stakes of that are pretty profound.”

Politico reported that Republican groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Crossroads GPS and Americans For Prosperity plan to spend approximately $1 billion on November’s elections. The Romney campaign and Republican National Committee plan to raise an additional $800 million.

“I’m obviously concerned about the implications for our race, but we’ve braced ourselves and we’ve been talking about this for some time,” Axelrod added. “It’s a concern. It’s one of my big concerns. But for congressional candidates, its gotta be a nightmare. We saw in the last election, in the last 3 weeks of those campaigns, Super PACs swooped in and spent huge amounts of money in the final 3 weeks to influence those congressional races and turned a lot of races with their money. I think you can anticipate that in spades this year.”

Watch video, courtesy of Current TV, below: