Avalanch of Romney SuperPAC money buried Gingrich; 'I feel Romney-boated'

DonkeyHotey, Flickr

As predicted, the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision overturning a century of limitations on unbridled corporate electioneering has dramatically altered politics. Mitt Romney, already the wealthiest candidate by far, also has the richest SuperPAC; it has spent an unprecedented $3.3 million in Iowa on television and direct mail attacks, most of them torpedoing Newt Gingrich's recent polling surge. Romney is so confident that he left the state yesterday to campaign in New Hampshire.

According to CNN, Romney's SuperPAC, Restore Our Future, has learned tricks employed by criminals and dictators. NBC reported last summer that an anonymous shell company made a $1 million donation to Restore Our Future.

The Huffington Post reported that Restore Our Future, which had been operating on a weekly schedule of reporting, notified the Federal Election Commission in mid-December that it was switching to a monthly schedule, therefore avoiding the requirement to file a disclosure report 12/22/11, 12 days before the Iowa caucuses.

Trevor Potter, a Republican lawyer and an advocate of tighter regulation of money in politics, said the group is circumventing a key principle of campaign law by not letting voters learn the identities of financial supporters.