And that’s just what they’ll spend in a month:

An independent group favoring Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney is launching a $25 million, monthlong advertising campaign in 10 states against President Barack Obama, further escalating an expensive TV ad war in presidential battlegrounds six months before Election Day.

Crossroads GPS plans to open the effort Thursday by spending $8 million on a TV ad that castigates Obama on the economy by using his own words against him.

And just where will these ads run?  The list is instructive:

“We need solutions, not just promises,” says a 60-second commercial that’s to run in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Obama won all of these states in 2008, but all of them are expected to be battlegrounds in this election.  Pennsylvania might be the toughest for Republicans to flip under normal circumstances, but Obama’s war on coal, the HHS mandate, and his flip-flop on gay marriage will hurt him in this blue-collar, Catholic state.  Michigan will be almost as difficult for the GOP, but Romney’s personal connection to the state gives him at least a shot at it.  North Carolina might be the only gimme, after last week’s gay-marriage faceplant and the fact that Obama couldn’t get 80% of Democrats to vote for him in a primary in which he was unopposed.

It’s interesting to see Wisconsin and Missouri left off of this list.  Republicans probably have a better shot in those states, and combined they represent more electoral votes than Michigan, or equal to Pennsylvania.  Expect further ad campaigns to focus on those states.

This is, of course, why Democrats are panicking on fundraising.  With unions spending money in Wisconsin on a losing cause this summer, they won’t have as much of a backstop on the outside-group front, and it’s only going to get worse.  At the same time American Crossroads has prepared this attack, the American Future Fund has a new spot already circulating that takes Obama to task for his continued fundraising links to Jon Corzine and other cronies on Wall Street:

Jim Geraghty has more of the background.  The Corzine link is a good one to play, but the Wall Street slam … not so much, especially for a group whose motto is “Advocating Conservative, Free Market Ideals” and whose presumed candidate is the former head of a private-equity firm.  They would do better to stick with Corzine and leave it at that.

Update: Jim Geraghty also has the new ad:

This is a very effective ad, as those that use an opponent’s own words against him.