Karl Rove is a jerk Part 17

But as trite as Rove's punditry may be, he's very good at one big thing. This must-read article from Walter Shapiro spells it out:

Perhaps Rove’s biggest initiative at Crossroads was conceptually modest, initially difficult to achieve, and ultimately potent: He convinced most other major independent groups aligned with the Republican Party to work together. “Groups tend to be territorial,” says Law. “They don’t like somebody else telling them what to do. And they’re especially proprietary about their information and their strategies and their donors.” Rove summarized his strategy via e-mail: “Invited them to lunch, suggested we all might be more effective and efficient if we shared our plans, shared costs and resources where possible.” The result is regular Washington meetings and coordination among groups like Crossroads, the Chamber of Commerce, and Americans for Prosperity (funded by the billionaire Koch brothers) to plot how to bedevil the Democrats in 2012.

Shapiro makes the interesting point that presidential Super-Pac advertising is unlikely to be all that influential because there are just so many ways for people to get information. It's down ticket where the danger lies:

... it’s on Capitol Hill where Democrats rightly fear Rove’s wrath. Mark Mellman, Reid’s pollster, admits to being “frightened” by Rove and his allies as Democrats struggle to hold the Senate. “You have a lot of potentially very close Senate races where one side with a fund-raising advantage can change everything,” Mellman says. Ali Lapp, who runs the House Majority PAC, a SuperPAC designed to help Democrats defy the odds and win back the House, puts it this way: “It’s a real fear that the Republicans will have a tidal wave of corporate and conservative money that could wash over everything.”