GOP Operatives Use Twitter To Hide In Plain Sight

It's one of the few campaign finance restrictions that everyone in Washington interprets the same way: Outside groups that raise unlimited cash cannot, under any circumstances, coordinate with the candidates they seek to promote. It's frustrating to executive directors of super-PACs: What good is $25 million in outside money if you don't know where to spend it?

To deal with that vexing question, campaigns and super-PACs have looked for creative ways to signal each other without breaking the anti-coordination rule. Candidates share planned media buys with reporters, letting the super-PACs know the messages the campaigns plan to send to voters and giving the outside groups time to adjust their own commercials. Campaigns post seemingly meaningless video on their YouTube channels that super-PACs repackage in their political spots. Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire even went so far as to publish a proposed ad script on her campaign website.