I hoid tings - Politico:Rove, GOP plot vast network to reclaim power

The Republican Party's best-connected political operatives have quietly built a massive fundraising, organizing and advertising machine based on the model assembled by Democrats early in the decade, and with the same ambitious goal -- to recapture Congress and the White House.

The new groups could give Republicans and their allies a powerful campaign apparatus separate from the Republican National Committee. Karl Rove, political architect of the Bush presidency, and Ed Gillespie, former Republican Party chairman, are the most prominent forces behind what is, in effect, a network of five overlapping groups, three of which were started in the past few months.

The operating assumption of Rove, Gillespie and the other organizers is that despite the historical dominance of Republican fundraising and organizing, the GOP has been outmaneuvered by Democrats and their allies in recent years, and it is time to strike back.

"Where they have a chess piece on the board, we need a chess piece on the board," said Gillespie, who is involved in all five groups in roles ranging from chairman to informal adviser. "Where they have a queen, we shouldn't have three pawns."

The network, which doesn't have a name, attempts to replicate the Democracy Alliance, an umbrella group -- founded in 2005 and funded by George Soros and other billionaires -- and to borrow tactics from liberal groups established to help Democrats regain power after eight years of the Bush administration.

Democratic strategist James Carville said the GOP's extra-party machine is emerging now largely for the same reason the Democrats' did.

"There's nothing that makes people hungry like being out of power and out of government," Carville said. "When you're in government, all of the big operatives have good jobs or they're working for some lobbying firm and making $3 million a year, while the other guys don't have anything to do