Obama Changes Course — Will Use SuperPACs After All

Obama is very worried about superPACs

President Obama has reversed himself–again. He sure has a bad habit of changing his mind on issues. Now, according to Politico, he’s “reluctantly” decided to “permit” his bundlers to raise money for a superPAC that will provide “outside” support for his reelection campaign.

President Barack Obama — a vehement opponent of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision — is offering a reluctant blessing to his top bundlers to raise cash for his pet super PAC in a bid to kick-start sluggish fundraising for Priorities USA Action, according to three Democrats with knowledge of the decision….

Top Obama campaign staff will appear at super PAC events, although the president himself will not.

Obama told Matt Lauer in an interview shown just this morning that he “worries” about superPACs.

“One of the worries we have obviously in the next campaign is that there are so many of these so-called super PACs, these independent expenditures that are gonna be out there,” Obama told NBC’s Matt Lauer in an interview taped before the Super Bowl on Sunday. “There is gonna be just a lot of money floating around, and I guarantee a bunch of it’s gonna be negative.”

As of tonight:

Two former White House aides have formed a super PAC, Priorities USA Action, which — along with an affiliated nonprofit group — hopes to raise $100 million to support Obama. But so far, its funding has been dwarfed by Republican groups’. In all of 2011, the Priorities groups reported raising $6.7 million while a single donor, casino owner Sheldon Adelson, has poured $10 million into a super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich.

Obama’s campaign has vowed that neither Obama nor his aides will raise money for super PACs, but the president’s senior campaign staff is now allowing top fundraisers to request that wealthy contributors donate to Priorities USA Action.

Obama was also very concerned about NAFTA, immunity for telecoms, and the Iraq war before reversing his positions on those issues, so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised.