Reading this post inspired me to do a little detective work. Markos writes at the end of a well-reasoned post: “But even those national numbers should really worry the conservative billionaires bankrolling the sleazy Super PACs currently targeting Obama. They are supposed to be eroding Obama’s support. Instead, the opposite is happening.”

SuperPACs are a new part of the election landscape, and one of the biggest ones out there is run by Karl Rove. The man’s name inspires intense emotions in most partisans on both sides, but not mine. I’m firmly convinced that Rove is a liability to the electoral fortunes of the GOP. His “strategy” in 2000 lost the election for Bush, but luckily the Supreme Court picked his fat out of the fire. And his nasty 2004 strategy very nearly lost what ought to have been an easy election for Bush–Kerry outperformed his fundamentals and came within a small number of votes in Ohio from winning. I would say that Ken Blackwell, then the Ohio Secretary of State, picked Karl’s fat out of the fire again, only the guy seems so incompetent he’d probably botch throwing an election if he tried to. And in 2006, Rove had nothing to work with. I’ll admit that Rove concerns me, aside from the electoral factors the man is a malignant force in our democracy, and has helped make political discourse uglier, and masterminded many of the schemes that destroyed the Clinton surplus. He is generally just not good news. But an awful lot of people have an investment in the evil genius narrative. My guess is that Rove having all that money is probably a net negative to the GOP because Rove is incapable of persuasion, only of polarization, and the money he takes in could have gone to someone more talented (i.e. it’s an opportunity cost).

But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. How has American Crossroads done so far? I moseyed over to OpenSecrets, and while they didn’t have much information on Crossroads GPS, the more secretive arm of his operation, the American Crossroads information paints an interesting picture. Here’s what they’ve been up to:

• The lion’s share of their spending has, unsurprisingly, gone to ads waged against Barack Obama. Obama has not been known to suffer any damage as a result, even though they’ve made several large ad buys recently. (Also, he spent a tiny amount in favor of Mitt Romney, which seems about right.)
• Next up is Tim Kaine, whose tiny lead over George Allen remains about the same as it has been, aside from the occasional outlier.
• Rove’s next biggest target is actually in favor of someone, namely Heather Wilson, Republican Senate candidate in New Mexico. She trails in the polls, though that might be because the people of her state know her all too well.
• Rove’s outfit spent a significant quantity of money in the NY-26 special election that was interpreted as a referendum on the Paul Ryan Medicare Plan. She spent money in favor of Jane Corwin, the Republican who embraced Ryan, and against her two opponents. She lost.
• He spent big against Bob Kerrey, the Nebraska retread who is set to lose the Democrats’ seat there. Rove probably deserves credit for that.
• A large amount of money spent against two Nevada Democrats, Shelley Berkeley and Kate Marshall. The former is having trouble, but no thanks to Rove–she’s got an ethics investigation headed her way. The latter lost a special election for the House.
• Rove spent a lot on the recent special election in Arizona to replace Gabby Giffords. He spent against Democrat Ron Barber and in favor of his Republican challenger. Barber won, easily.
• He also has spent some against Claire McCaskill of Missouri, but it’s a relatively small amount, so he probably can’t claim credit that her campaign is struggling.

It’s an interesting list. Rove spent a lot on special elections in the West, which makes sense given that he sees that as a trouble point for Republicans in the future, as well as the ideological point at stake in New York. But this isn’t a terribly successful list, his biggest successes were in torpedoing Marshall’s campaign, which was initially rated a toss-up, with Kerrey and to some extent with McCaskill. But Marshall was running in Nevada’s most Republican district, and McCaskill and Kerrey are running in Republican states. Which means, yes, that Rove is only any good when he’s able to polarize and has a built-in advantage with the composition of the electorate. The national electorate doesn’t favor Karl in the same way, so I wouldn’t expect him to pull a rabbit out of his hat in Ohio or something.

This isn’t to say that SuperPACs aren’t a blight on our democracy. But I see no reason to fear Karl Rove’s operation for now–he’s shown little talent for what he needs it to do, and there aren’t very many Ben Nelson types out there for him to terrorize anymore.