Blowback: Chamber of Commerce to Ramp Up Campaign Ads

Looks like Obama's Big Lie isn't having the desired effect.

The president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said the business group would "ramp up" its work on behalf of candidates in the closing weeks of the election.

Chamber President Thomas Donohue wrote the group's board of directors to promise not to shrink in the face of attacks by President Obama and Democrats.

"[F]or the next three weeks leading up to Election Day you will see us ramp up efforts to educate voters about the positions of candidates of both parties who are committed to free enterprise and economic growth," Donohue wrote Tuesday in the letter, the text of which was posted by the New York Times.

The Chamber has found itself under siege, along with several other groups that have spent big this election cycle largely on behalf of Republicans, from the White House, congressional Democrats and a series of liberal groups who assert the Chamber might be spending foreign money on their political efforts.

"This is patently untrue," Donohue wrote of those allegations. "Let me be clear. The Chamber does not use any foreign money to fund voter education activities — period."

Still, some Democrats said their attacks on the Chamber and groups like American Crossroads, which is affiliated with GOP strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, who were both advisers in President George W. Bush's administration, is getting their party political traction.

"I think it is having resonance," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the leader of House Democrats' campaign efforts, about the attacks on the Chamber during an appearance on MSNBC.

Keep dreaming. Obviously this is their October Surprise and they figured their lapdog media would play along. But they're left with far left blogs to help push their falsehoods while the mainstream media isn't playing along. Now they're going to pay for it.

Meanwhile, more grim polls news for the Democrats, from a Democrat pollster.

Republicans are winning eight out of 10 competitive open House seats surveyed in a groundbreaking new poll by The Hill.

Taken on top of 11 GOP leads out of 12 freshman Democratic districts polled last week, The Hill 2010 Midterm Election Poll points toward 19 Republican victories out of 22 races, while Democrats win only two and one is tied.

A further 20 districts will be polled over the next two weeks, for a total of 42 of the most closely contested races, which will point to who is going to win on Nov. 2 and control the House in the 112th Congress.

The Week 2 focus on open seats vacated by Democrats suggests a string of important pickup victories by the GOP in the midterm election just three weeks away.

Republican candidates have taken big leads in two districts Democrats have held for nearly a century and a half-century, respectively, according to The Hill’s survey. A Republican is also ahead in the heavily Democratic district that contains President Obama’s hometown of Honolulu.

Many races are tight — 12 of the 22 fall within the margin of error — but the margins, though slim, preponderantly favor the GOP.