they removed the limits on individuals, corporations or unions contributions to independent Political Action Committees.

Super PACs were born.

Super PACs' impact was demonstrated immediately in the Iowa caucuses. On December 5, 2011, one month before caucus night, Newt Gingrich was gaining popularity nationally and was beating Romney in Iowa by 31% to 17% in the CBS/New York Times poll. Then the Romney Super PAC struck. It spent $335,000 the next week attacking Gingrich and Gingrich's support fell to 27 %. The next week it spent $779,000 and Gingrich fell to 25%. The next week $663,000 and Gingrich fell to 14%.

By caucus night, Romney's super PAC had spent $3.4 million and Gingrich's super PAC less than $800,000. The Iowa Republican party announced that Romney was the winner, but the realnews was that Romney's super PAC money had reduced Gingrich from 33% of the vote to 13% in just one month of negative ads.

After Iowa, Gingrich dropped his "no negative ads" promise and his super PAC received $5 million from Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. In South Carolina his super PAC matched the Romney super PAC almost dollar for dollar, and Gingrich was victorious.

Gingrich was confident. He was coming off a big win, and was tied with Romney in Florida with 10 days to go. "Overnight a storm rained dollars on the television," said Susan MacManus, a University of South Florida political scientist. According to the Wesleyan Media Project, Romney and his allies, especially his super PAC, aired 12,768 television commercials to just 210 by Gingrich and