Managing all of this new, dark money was a challenge. In April, as campaign professionals were trying to figure out how to take maximum advantage of the Citizens United decision, Gillespie (see Ed Gillespie in blog search) invited Republican operatives to what he described in an e-mail as "an informal discussion of the 2010 landscape." The unusual meeting was to take place in Karl Rove's living room on Weaver Terrace, a well-off enclave of Northwest Washington...
What transpired was a war council in which the twenty assembled chieftains coordinated their plans of action, and divided up their territory. Kenneth Vogel, in Big Money, describes it as "the birthplace of a new Republican Party -- one steered by just a handful of unelected operatives who answered only to the richest activists who funded them." (DM, p 305-306)