Frank Rich at NYMag has a nice comprehensive terrifying roundup of “the old, white, rich men who are buying this election“:
If you want to appreciate what Barack Obama is up against in 2012, forget about the front man who is his nominal opponent and look instead at the Republican billionaires buying the ammunition for the battles ahead. A representative example is Harold Simmons, an 80-year-old Texan who dumped some $15 million into the campaign before primary season had ended. Reminiscing about 2008, when he bankrolled an ad blitz to tar the Democrats with the former radical Bill Ayers, Simmons told The Wall Street Journal, “If we had run more ads, we could have killed Obama.” It is not a mistake he intends to make a second time. The $15 million Simmons had spent by late February dwarfs the $2.8 million he allotted to the Ayers takedown and the $3 million he contributed to the Swift Boat Veterans demolition of John Kerry four years before that. Imagine the cash that will flow now that the GOP sideshows are over and the president is firmly in Simmons’s crosshairs.
His use of the verb killed was meant in jest, of course, much as Foster Friess ($1.8 million in known contributions, and counting) was joking when he suggested that “gals” could practice birth control by putting Bayer aspirin between their knees. America’s billionaires are such cards! And we had better get used to their foibles and funny bones. Whatever else happens in 2012, it will go down as the Year of the Sugar Daddy. Inflamed by Obama-hatred, awash in self-pity, and empowered by myriad indulgent court and Federal Election Commission rulings, an outsize posse of superrich white men will spend whatever it takes to have its way with the body politic and, if victorious, with the country itself. Given the advanced age of most of this cohort, 2012 may be seen as the election in which the geezer empire struck back.
Sugar daddies—whom I’ll define here as private donors or their privately held companies writing checks totaling $1 million or more (sometimes much more) in this election cycle—are largely a Republican phenomenon, most of them one degree of separation from Karl Rove and his unofficial partners in erecting a moneyed shadow GOP, David and Charles Koch. At last look, there were 25 known sugar daddies on the right (or more, if you want to count separately the spouses and children who pitch in). You’ve likely heard of Sheldon Adelson, the Vegas tycoon who is Benjamin Netanyahu’s unofficial ambassador to the GOP. But you may be less familiar with Irving Moskowitz, the bingo entrepreneur who funnels his profits into East Jerusalem settlements. Or Robert Mercer, the hedge-fund master of “flash trading” who poured a clandestine $1 million into ads attacking the “ground-zero mosque” and nearly another $3 million into a scale-model railroad in his Long Island mansion. Or Steven Lund, the co-founder of Nu Skin, which became “direct selling” sponsor of the Romney-run 2002 Winter Olympics after having spent much of the nineties settling complaints over false advertising and other unscrupulous practices with the Federal Trade Commission and six different states’ attorneys general…
I know some of you are going to point out that little of this is news to those who’ve been diligently following the progressive blogs (or even the more literate of the right-wing blogs, where they’re vicariously proud of their masters’ “accomplishments”), but it’s useful to have all the links collected in one four-page article next time someone on twitter or the facewall asks why us liberals act like being successful was somehow a bad thing….
It’s no wonder that in substance and even a bit in style, the 2012 election echoes the climactic Gilded Age election of 1896. John D. Rockefeller Sr., Henry Clay Frick, and their peers were panicked by the prospect of a populist president—in the form of William Jennings Bryan, the Democrat—and rallied around William McKinley, the Republican long cited as a hero by Karl Rove. McKinley’s campaign manager was the hard-driving Mark Hanna, a millionaire businessman who formulated a lasting maxim: “There are two things that matter in politics. The first is money and I
can’t remember what the second one is.” Such was his fund-raising prowess that the GOP outspent the Democrats by a margin of 23 to 1 (an estimated $7 million to $300,000). McKinley won with 51 percent of the popular vote, though his assassination at the start of his second term in 1901 would set the stage for the ascent of his vice-president, Teddy Roosevelt, and the Progressive movement. Many of the reforms that Roosevelt would champion—estate and income taxes, more federal regulation of business and the workplace, fair play in labor disputes, protection of the public from contaminated food and drugs—are nearly identical to those opposed by the social-Darwinist sugar daddies of today.It was also in the years surrounding the 1896 election that legislators in the South, eager to undo Reconstruction, started suppressing the black vote (and that of poor whites too) by erecting barriers like poll taxes and literacy tests. Another version of that scam is also playing out in 2012. Under the pretext of nonexistent “voter fraud,” seventeen states have passed restrictive legislation to deter voting by those at the lower end of the economic scale: minorities, immigrants, the elderly, and students. These copycat bills have largely been modeled on a template endorsed by the American Legislative Exchange Council—the same organization that pushed for “stand your ground” laws. Among this group’s backers, needless to say, are the Kochs…
Much more, including a list of the Top 25 Malefactors of Great Wealth Sugar Daddies, at the link.
butler
Amazing how someone who apparently succeeded in business can be so naive about how real politics work. Maybe because of his age he thinks its still a 3 channel news environment which can be controlled by a big enough purse. Or maybe he figures its another thing he can buy, if only he’s willing to spend enough.
Spend away, sir. Spend every penny.
cathyx
I think that a Romney presidency can make a lot or rich white men richer.
slim's tuna provider
this is why they had the position of “tribune” in rome… and why the tribunes got knifed a little too often.
BGinCHI
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the parties (mostly the GOP) and the media outlets who get paid good money to do this work are fleecing these stupid old gits.
There is definitely a pre-internet, pre-communications technology paradigm shift mentality here. Money is going to make an impact, and maybe even a difference. But you cannot measure this the same way we did even in 2000 or 2004.
Things have changed dramatically with cell phone use, internet use, social media, and so on.
Tone In DC
These guys literally have nothing to run on; they are bankrupt of actual solutions to any real issues or problems. Neither they nor Romney have anything to say to voters.
Swift Boat ads? Bill Ayers? The “Ground Zero mosque”? These are their Important Issues?
Ben Cisco
@Tone In DC:
Also, and more importantly in their mind, “Ooga Booga Boogity Blackity bin Blackerson” and so forth.
Peter
What I want to know is, if the GOP gets absolutely clobbered in the election, will these rich fucks be willing to pony up the same level of cash next time? Probably, but fifteen million’s quite a lot to sink into an investment with no return.
PeakVT
At one level I hope those guys spend, spend, spend – it wouldn’t hurt the economy, that’s for sure.
dmsilev
Impressive, in its own incredibly gauche way.
General Stuck
More pro left fear mongering by the village idiots.
Here is a news flash, it ain’t 2008 anymore, or for that matter 1896, and Obama has a record to run on, and is somewhat to a large degree not easily swiftboated, and is far from being so broke he can’t match the wingnuts trying to buy the election. On top of that, the quaint idea that quality of candidates still matters. The corruption from CU campaign cash can be mitigated, the real damage will be done by it between elections in the governing process. First we get the tired old meme of dems and Obama selling out SS, all over again. Now more hand wringing from the village peanut gallery, that the sky is falling. I hope this isn’t going to be the meat and potatoes of BJ front paging in the run up to the election.
Jeebus H Christ. Just shoot me now.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
What truly pisses me off about all these ancient billionaires is that they are.. well, ANCIENT. Most of these creatures will be dead or senile before this decade is through.
Dude, you’re 80: Your time has passed. Normal people are generally forced to retire well before your age.
You should be on your yacht/estate/whatever, bouncing grandkids on your knee or whatever it is happy 80 year olds do. Instead of spending your last few mortal breaths on Earth spitting hate at the rest of us who will outlive you.
El Tiburon
This should be the story-line that Democrats use: A few rich, white old men are running the country through the Republican party.
Ripley
Yeah, that was the problem. You didn’t spend enough on TV/radio ads. Are these titans of industry really that stupid? Wait, never mind…
PeakVT
@Peter: It’s not a lot to a multi-billionaire. Romney might think twice about coughing up that much, but for Adelson it’s about 0.2% of his net worth (though that is probably pretty illiquid, so his gifts to Gnoot were a much larger share of his available cash).
Brachiator
But part of the point should be to get information about these sugar daddies out of the intellectual ghetto of progressive blogs and more widely communicated to voters. And some of these guys have been discussed on Rachel Maddow’s show, still in liberal land, but a bit wider in appeal.
Also, as far as history goes, I am not sure that William Jennings Bryan would have been great shakes as a president; and it is interesting that the Republican VP, Teddy R, took up the mantle of the progressives.
Jamey
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: Try telling a Master of the Universe that his time has passed.
Peter
@PeakVT: On paper it isn’t, but the reason they’re doing this in the first place is that they’re insanely miserly. They’re sinking all this money in for the sake of tax cuts that don’t amount to a whole lot more than that drop, after all.
Jamey
Also, SOROS!!!1, both-sides-do-it, yada-yada.
slim's tuna provider
@General Stuck: don’t underestimate knock-on effects. you can build a large organization with that much money. even if it’s unsuccessful in the election, it’ll give a few hundred young republican cadres their first/second job, and a lot of unit cohesion. it’s like littlefinger in GOThrones — not actually succeeding in anything, just getting all his people into key positions. (that was a stretch…)
gex
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: This. I blow people’s minds when I point out that a significant portion of Fox News’ main demo are people who went to grade school before the Civil Rights Act AND before Hawaii was a state. It helps put some of the Tea Party statements and behavior into context.
These are people for whom electricity, indoor plumbing, the telephone, the tv, etc. were all new or relatively recent. No wonder they’re freaking out.
And these rich old guys may not be as out of touch as the Fox viewer I envision, they still can’t handle the modern world. This Internet thing makes it easy to show how the side that lies to its base or lies to the moderates are doing exactly that: lying.
Sly
Harold Simmons is one of the more infamous 1980s corporate raider parasites, who once tried to acquire Lockheed to liquidate the pension fund of its workers. Since then he’s taken a higher road and gotten rich off of nuclear waste dumps by greasing the palms of the good, god-fearing men in the Texas legislature and governor’s mansion.
If Harold Simmons is to be held up as an exemplar of unencumbered American Exceptionalism, we should just make the vulture our national bird and get it over with. The peasant uprising was invented because of guys like him.
David Hunt
I find it interesting that Bill Maher is a “Sugar Daddy” to Obama by that definition as he gave his Super-PAC a million dollars. Still, I don’t think Maher is going to have any real influence on Obama’s campaign or his administration after he is re-elected, FSM willing. Does this make me naive about the integrity of Obama or cynical about how Democrats feel they can ignore their base? Also, I wonder who, if anyone, has given that much to Obama/his PAC as a contribution. I’d be mildly amused if Maher were his largest contributor.
pragmatism
slightly OT but relevant to sugar daddies: are you an attractive person? do you want to travel but lack the funds? are you ok with the potential implication of a quid pro quo of sexual favors for travel expenses? if you answered yes to those questions, http://www.misstravel.com is the website for you.
http://jezebel.com/5904542/the-dating-website-where-rich-people-take-pretty-people-on-fancy-vacations-which-is-100-definitely-not-prostitutey-at-all
PeakVT
@Peter: For most of those guys, the current tax structure really does matter, since most of their income comes as capital gains or gets shoved through the carried interest loophole. Close the latter and Romney’s tax rate would likely double. Moving the top rate from 35 to 39 is an issue more for what I call the working rich – those making $250K to $1M.
But the Republican daddies are also trying to scratch that power itch.
Foregone Conclusion
It’s interesting how many of them are involved in gambling, or in forms of financial trading which have no real social function. Both basically function on the main imperfection of the market – human irrationality/gullibility. It makes Romney look like Rockefeller.
And yes, this isn’t like 2000, it isn’t like 2008. Most independents and moderate-to-conservative Dems know that Obama isn’t some kind of proto-Marxist Black Panther tyrant – they might think he’s failed to carry out his promises, or disagree with health care or the stimulus or whatever, but OOGABOOGAKENYANUSURPER! isn’t going to convince them. Neither are ads full of made-up wingnut scandals, because people generally think that Obama’s trustworthy and ethical – because he is. Negative ads are of course mainly about driving down turnout, specifically your opposition more than your own. But I don’t think anyone’s really tried a full-on negative onslaught on a sitting president before (2004 sure as hell doesn’t count).
And, without eliciting squeaks of outrage, Obama has the entire expenditure of the federal government on his side. If he can point to how much stimulus money went into such-and-such a bridge, or whatever, and scatter a bit more money around strategically, that might be a pretty sound investment. Yes, I am being Machiavellian.
ETA: by full-on negative onslaught, I mean in the modern, TV-ad driven age via purely negative ads. Obviously there are a lot of presidential elections with a lot of negative verbal and print attacks in the past, but that’s different from an Operation Rolling Thunder of loud advertisements with dodgy stats on them.
General Stuck
@slim’s tuna provider:
I never said it wasn’t important, especially outside of elections. It is huge. Though not so much for this election, for a couple of reasons. Obama ain’t broke and people like him. Though dems need to and will pay attention to House races getting flooded with superpac cash. And candidates still matter, as opposed to
I am just saying perspective is in order that the above statement is devoid of that perspective. And not framing the problem in such a way. Highlighting and making lists of the details of where the money is coming from and going to, is important. But not creating urban legend of some wingnut white whale that will eat us all tomorrow, is not all that helpful, imo.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Peter:
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BGinCHI at #4 has it right; these idiots are being fleeced. But they don’t care. Not any more. These evil fuckers are old. 80 years too long on this Earth in the case of the one dude quoted. There isn’t going to be a next time for some of them. Hence their motto today is:
__
Do not gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the blackety-black blacknessing of the light!
clayton
OT: Vigilantes in Georgia jailed — from that case that someone front-paged a few days ago.
Pictures at the link . . .
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@David Hunt: That’s an interesting point. I don’t doubt that Maher would be happy to be called a sugar daddy.
It’s different in that Maher’s stated goal was bringing attention to the way that the rich are trying to buy our elections, and I don’t think he’s made any sort of demands of Obama since making the donation.
Still, if Maher were to call up Obama after his reelection and say, “Hey, remember that million I gave you? I want weed legalized,” I’d be fine with that.
SatanicPanic
These guys really make a good case for wealth confiscation
rikryah
This was a good article by Rich
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Jamey:
Even Don Corleone knew when it was time to step down to an advisory role and move on to other, end-of-life priorities.
Just sayin’.
Tone In DC
@Ben Cisco:
LULz.
SatanicPanic
@clayton: Nice neckbeard on that guy
Punchy
But Burnsie told me CU was correctly decided….
The Other Chuck
I’ve got no problem with calling Bill Maher a Sugar Daddy. So what does Bill Maher stand for? Even with a full accounting of his cynicism, I think you’ll find he’s far more of a decent human being than the hive of scum and villany that skitter about in the shadows bankrolling the likes of the swiftboaters.
Oh and Simmons? It took one election cycle for “Swiftboat” to become one of the most negatively-charged connotations since the “gate” suffix. Bravo sir, but you shot your load. Every time you mentioned Ayers, Obama’s numbers went _up_ because voters recognized that this was the brightest red of herrings.
Real operators know how to fool most of the people all of the time, so I think we can count our lucky stars that the right has people like you, Mr. Simmons: a blind squirrel who found one nut, possessed now of more money than sense. You go spend that cash now.
Tom Q
It’s not just that 2012 is a post-TV age that will render much of this obscene expenditure meaningless. It’s that presidential elections are not jump-balls affected by the slightest breeze; they are existential affairs in which the voters make a judgment based on the totality of the evidence.
The Romney folk (officially affiliated or otherwise) may delude themselves that, since they won the primaries by flooding the zone with money, they can simply do the same in the general. But that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how elections work. Yes, primaries can be won in such a fashion (in fact, it’s nowadays typical for the best-financed candidate to triumph). But the modern presidency is too much in our face on a daily basis for mere advertising to change public perception. And, as General Stuck say, it’s not as if Obama is short the cash to compete.
Thinking that more ads woiuld have defeated Obama in 2008 — when the incumbent Republican had an approval rating in the 20s –is pure myopia, but I’m just as glad it’s carried over to this year; I want to see those bastards gobsmacked by the November outcome. After the fact, these billionaires are going to be viewed as having about the same effect as Meg Whitman did in 2010.
Tonal Crow
@Tone In DC:
Of course they’re bankrupt of actual solutions to real issues. They are all about propaganda, all the time. Their approach is to overwhelm the discourse with fake (but highly inflammatory) “issues”, then position themselves on the “correct” side of them (and Democrats on the “wrong” side), and leverage the resulting angst into votes and campaign contributions from the people they fooled.
It’s a totally standard propaganda technique.
And it works again and again and again and again because the fake “issues” are designed to push peoples’ emotional buttons.
Are Democrats going to do some button-pushing this time, or are we going to cede the field to Republicans again?
gaz
@clayton: OT: (The newton county thing)
Thank god.
And I’m through giving the police any benefit of any doubt here. The officers involved made some ugly choices
The could have cleared some things up that evening. While this probably isn’t anywhere near the full exchange, I think it speaks volumes of the attitude of the officers involved. They wanted to arrest this couple (for whatever reason).
I hope this ends up on their jackets in the very least. I don’t expect much will come of it though, as far as that goes.
Bubblegum Tate
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
I refer to Butters’ surprisingly poignant speech to his bullying grandmother:
Tonal Crow
@Tom Q: I rather disagree. The right propaganda can totally change a race, as in Willie Horton, the Slimeboat Veterans for Lying, what the media did to Howard Dean’s hockey-dad yell, the runup to the war in Iraq, etc.
Southern Beale
Yesterday, when we discovered that basically three rich, old, white Texans have provided the bulk of the money for American Crossroads, I asked a simple question:
WHEN DO THESE PEOPLE RUN OUT OF MONEY? NEVER?
Seriously. You’re so rich you’ve got $3 million to blow on an election campaign that failed? So you’re sinking $15 million into this one? Are you fucking kidding me?
You’re not, ya know, giving your money to the poor, like you’re always saying we should do so we don’t need to use “big government” taxpayer-funded programs for things? Aren’t these guys always telling us that charity and churches should take care of all social problems? And yet they sink $15 million on a political campaign, instead of, gee I dunno, housing the homeless?
Fuck you, Harold Simmons. How do I starve this beast? Where does he get his fucking bazillions from?
Seriously, I want all of these assholes to go bankrupt. Make it so.
gaz
@The Other Chuck:
The guy slept with Ann Coulter. I’m not precisely sure what that says about his decency exactly, except to say that it makes me wonder about his sense of the profane.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@El Tiburon: I’m planning on posting this article under that title on FB tonight. I might word it as “Hey, Republicans, see who bought your party.”
gaz
@Bubblegum Tate: heh. awesome.
MattR
@Southern Beale: Harold Simmons’s net worth increased by $3.1 billion in 2011. $15 million is half a percent of that.
Narcissus
It’s like the oligarchs aren’t even pretending to believe in democracy anymore.
gaz
@Narcissus: You’ve noticed that, too?
Who’s going to call them on it? MSNBC? NYT?
balloon-juice?
(ETA: You can consider those questions rhetorical)
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Narcissus:
__
Sort of like Putin rearing his head in our airspace. Only it isn’t Putin, it’s his oligarchic buddies. And it isn’t our airspace, it’s our televisions.
__
[disclaimer: no actual snow-white Persian cats were harmed during the filming of this takeover]
gaz
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: DAMNED LIBRUL MEDIA, amirite? ;)
Culture of Truth
These are their Important Issues?
No but “80% of all income gains for the top 1% is not enough, dammit” is not as popular, oddly.
Citizen Alan
@gaz:
So Bill Maher is into bestiality. Who are we to judge?
MattR
@Southern Beale: If you want to get even angrier, check out Forbes’ “Real Time Billionaires” page that shows how much they are up or down for the day. Simmons’s investments went up $93.34 million today. OTOH, a drop in Wal-Mart stock cost Jim, Christie, Alice and S Robson Walton more than half a billion dollars each today.
gaz
@Citizen Alan: Well, that and he’s sort of an ass, and doesn’t take the time to become informed before mouthing off.
I don’t really mind the guy. I even watch him sometimes, as he even makes good points and such as often as not.
However, sometimes he speaks and I cringe, because I know some wingnut somewhere is going to cling on to something PROFOUNDLY stupid that he just said, and that’s all we’ll hear for the next month. Meh. His ratio of funny vs. liability is not high enough for me. Even Stewart handles himself better than that – despite pimping the BothSidesDoIt(TM) bullshit.
So you can have him. Steven Colbert is much funnier in any case.
Shit, initially I didn’t mean this to be an honest dig at Bill Maher. I just sort went there anyway. =/ oh well, I’ll let it stand. In the interest of averting a flame war I’ll just go ahead and say that I suck and I am an asshole, and save my kind critics here at BJ the trouble. Fair enough?
PeakVT
Remember bundlers? The Romney campaign is still using them, of course, but the amounts changing hands are much smaller than what the sugar daddies are throwing around.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@MattR:
__
It does my heart glad to know that these men, who have everything a person could ask for in terms of material wealth and then some, and then some more, and then an unaccoutable amount more than that, have decided to ruin their own happiness with rage-fueled political jihads, and as a direct consequence of this self-inflicted wound they will die bitter and unhappy people frustrated that they could not force the world to be the way they wanted it to be and convinced that it was oh soooo close to coming true and only just slipped through their fingers. Hahahahahahaaaaaa! Idiots.
__
The schaden, it freudes.
Martin
@Southern Beale:
They don’t. Seriously.
Think of wealth like a mountain with poverty on one side and extreme wealth on the other and you want to cross over.
You start on one side with no money and its incredibly difficult to climb up (add wealth) even a little bit, but the more you climb (the more wealth you add), the flatter it gets, and the easier the climbing (wealth adding) gets. Up at the top, it’s really easy to keep going. And then you go over the other side and start going down. On this side, it’s easier to keep going than it is to stay still! You can’t help but get weather – almost without trying. If you go far enough, like a Bill Gates, you make money so rapidly that you’d be hard pressed to stop it even if you wanted to. Of course it does eventually end, but it really does work that way.
Generationally, if you can hand money down, you get to start your kids higher up on the mountain, or like in Romney’s case, already on the downslope. If you are generationally poor, then it almost doesn’t matter how hard you work, you’ll never be able to make any real ground on that mountain.
I’d say the peak is somewhere in the high 6 figures if you are still working age – someplace where you can generate enough income off of your wealth to match the median household income, and then if you work, you can add that much again. If you aren’t adding wealth significantly faster than inflation at that point, you’re doing something wrong.
So for these really rich guys, so long as they’re falling into money faster than they’re dumping it on candidates – and even for Romney that’s $75M over 4 years – they’ll never run out.
Martin
@PeakVT: FEC requires disclosure for campaign contributions. Don’t need to disclose for SuperPACs. Dems apparently are sufficiently proud to support their candidate to not demand anonymity to do so.
gaz
@Southern Beale:
Never.
Wealth begets more wealth basically. So what you have to do is understand that this is raw economic calculus for these people.
Right now, pumping capital into campaigns that are likely to be friendly to them yields Return On Investment.
It’s not about draining the vault. We have to make it such that pumping capital into these campaigns generates a net loss for these people. That’s the hurdle. Once the numbers don’t look good, this kind of support will drop off.
Turnout is how we achieve that. Relentless fucking turnout.
I don’t care who you are. GOP, Reform Party, Democrat. Fucking vote (it’s always good for dems when this happens, but ssshhh!)
FlipYrWhig
@Martin: It seems that the way they never run out of money is kind of like the way Social Security never actually runs out of money.
FlipYrWhig
@gaz: I feel like when I used to watch his old Politically Incorrect shows Maher would almost half the time say at least one horrendous thing. What stuck with me was his complete contempt for the pro golfer who sued to use a cart in tournaments because of a circulatory disorder. He kept saying that “everybody can’t do everything.”
I think 9/11 pushed him leftwards, and before that he was very much a classic libertarian/hedonist/individualist: pro-weed, pro-sex, pro-gay, anti-government, anti-war, anti-lawyer, anti-church, if you’re a loser it’s your own fault, etc.
Linnaeus
I suppose I shouldn’t be amazed by this, but it’s hard not to be. As folks have rightly pointed out in previous comments on this thread, once you’ve got that “critical mass” of money, you make it faster than you can lose it. It’s astounding to me how a few grand in the bank is a boon to folks like me, but it’s less than pocket change to these folks.
And I’m reminded once again of that exchange from Chinatown:
Jake Gittes: I just wanna know what you’re worth. More than 10 million?
Noah Cross: Oh my, yes!
Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can’t already afford?
Cross: The future, Mr. Gittes! The future…
Tom Q
@Tonal Crow: I disagree back. First off, let’s distinguish between what I’m talking about — presidential elections — and some things with which you’ve conflated them: the Iraq War run-up and the Dean primary loss. In the latter case, I specifically said primaries are different from general elections. In the former…no one would ever disagree that sustained campaigns, propaganda or otherwise, can affect the way crowds move on various issues of the day. (Though Iraq was never truly popular in polling terms; and getting the DC press to go along with it was a far easier task)
But presidential elections are a different thing, and, to make that case, I have to disagree with the two examples you cite. Despite the mythology, the Willie Horton ads had no particular impact on the ’88 election. The GOP should ALWAYS have been the favorite in that election: Reagan’s second term was a model of peace and prosperity, and even a bland candidate like Bush I wasn’t enough to blow that advantage. It was Dukakis’ phantom lead in July that was the mirage; that it disappeared contemporaneously with the Horton ads doesn’t mean one caused the other.
Similar with ’84 and the Swift Boat thing. Kerry was always a slight underdog in that election, thanks to an economy that started growing at just the right time, the initial successes in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a Republican party that was fully united around Bush. Polls showed that Kerry got essentially every voter who really didn’t like Bush; the problem, from our side’s point of view, is there just weren’t enough of them. I know this goes contrary to popular wisdom, but there it is. The Swift Boaters didn’t change the outcome.
This year, Obama’s advantages — bringing down unemployment, catching bin Laden, personal charisma — are far greater than what Bush had in ’04, and I’m confident it won’t matter what bilge they throw at him from now to November.
Brazilian Rascal
Tut tut, people. Don’t you know that both sides do it?
See, Sully points the way. On the conservative side, Fox News made a boo boo.
On the other, that darn liberal TOM FRIEDMAN was also innacurate!
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/04/corrections-on-fox-news.html
The Other Chuck
@Southern Beale:
Hypocrisy is the very medium they exist in. You cannot successfully point out hypocrisy to the right any more than you can make a fish aware that it’s wet.
gaz
@FlipYrWhig: I agree, I actually brought up his tryst with Ann Coulter as subtle jab at his non-to-distant libertarian-fuck-everybody-but-me roots. Sometimes, the line between them and liberals gets blurry. At it’s core however, this libertarian-liberal-igmfu apple is still rotten. Sometimes, he even pulls the curtain back and lets you see it. ETA: Pardon the horrendous mixing of metaphors. I’ve got my head in my work right now. =)
Forum Transmitted Disease
@clayton: SECOND AMENDMENT! TENTH AMENDMENT! STATE’S RIGHTS! WHITE POWER!
oh shit that last just slipped in there
PeakVT
@Martin: My point was that bundlers, which used to be seen as the big evil players, have been displaced this cycle in terms of money. The restrictions on each type of donation aren’t the same, of course, but the difference in amounts is rather eye-opening.
gaz
@Forum Transmitted Disease: you forgot: NECKBEARDS!
FlipYrWhig
@gaz: The rotten apple behind that curtain needs to stay on the other side of the blurry line, that’s for sure. ;D
Xboxershorts
@Tone In DC: Swift Boat ads? Bill Ayers? The “Ground Zero mosque”? These are their Important Issues?
I sometimes think progressives underestimate the value inherent in the corporate control of so much media.
Go back to last fall, when Obama signed into law, republican sponsored legislation that allowed horse slaughter houses to operate in America again.
Every single headline in America read “Obama authorizes horse slaughter!” and my social media friend stream was flooded with outrage that the humble Obama could do something so inhumane. Basic distrust of our traditional media coupled with 5 minutes of research showed that headline originating from Drudge.
I tried to explain to the Firebaggers that they were being played. That the propagandists in America intentionally wrote that headline to promote a schism in the democratic base between traditional democrats and progressive democrats.
I showed the research, linked to real Horse industry newsletters that clearly explained the niche this legislation was intended to fill, to no avail.
More than a few people I share much in common with have defriended me. Obot I was called. Apologist. Traitor.
I’m telling you, right here, right now, do not trust the media. Believe that you will be lied to. And do your research. Glenzilla is NOT a trustworthy source, look for the fingerprints of Drudge if you think you’re supposed to be outraged at this president. Sometimes you should, but I tell you, if the fingerprints of Drudge show up on that headline, you better look deeper than your personally trusted sources.
And above all else, remember, a vote for 3rd party in THIS election, as in 2000, is a vote for the republican nominee.
Believe me, Karl Rove’s minions have sent that memo to their very large and very well funded propaganda machine.
This election is anything BUT sewn up.
Chuck Butcher
It is pretty damn easy to agree that the GOPers are evil fucksticks and all that and money is their tool. It would also pay to check the outcomes when Dems have held power over the last several decades. It seems money will find a way…
gaz
@FlipYrWhig: heh.
Hey FP’ers! if I start pasting php into the thread, please ban me for my own good
gaz
@Xboxershorts: I’m not going to argue your position on the election, because irrespective of it’s merits, it’s a healthy position to have.
“I sometimes think progressives underestimate the value inherent in the corporate control of so much media.”
but this? not in my case. I scream about the corporatist media. I have nightmares which are essentially reruns of glenn beck pouring gasoline on nancy smash over and over to the soundtrack of fingernails on his chalkboard. I cross myself whenever I pass a newstand with a WSJ. =) /snark
Nah, my theory centers around the awesome gaffe power of Willard, and the fact that in their gut, nobody likes him. It’s almost impossible to give him positive coverage so long as he moves his mouth. Then they tried Ann, to find she’s no better at this. Now it’s Obama ate dog meat. That doesn’t win elections, despite the media falling all over itself to present a nailbiter. They want money, and sensation, and they are conflicted between pulling Sh*t My Nominee Says reality tv, and pretending the race is close. My guess is they’ll try both, but in the end, it’ll hurt romney more than help him.
Martin
@PeakVT: True. I thought Maddows observation last night was pretty brilliant, that the kind of money laundering that led to the Abramoff convictions and the fall of Delay is now done in plain sight and with a fair bit of pride by folks like Adelsen, all courtesy of the Roberts court. And that the organization at the center of the Abramoff scandal is the group that picked up the voter ID/stand your ground legislation championing from ALEC.
When you thought it was impossible to become more cynical about politics, they manage to give you all new reasons to give up on the whole thing.
So yeah, bundlers? They’re like innocent little kittens now.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@gaz: I think the neighbors surely ought to go to jail, have their guns taken, and then let the civil suits commence. Bankrupt them and turn them out.
That being said, the real assholes here were the cops, who hauled the couple in and didn’t bother to check and see if they actually owned the property. I have a feeling the neighbors are taking the hit for the actions of the cops, but since they seem to be total douchebag lowlifes who DID start this whole shit orgy in the name of protecting their white supremacy, I think I’m OK with that.
gaz
@Forum Transmitted Disease: cosigned.
Southern Beale
@MattR:
So I guess he’s got a ways to go before he runs out of money. You know, one nice thing about a little stock market crash is that it could wipe some of these assholes out.
Speaking of, the big joke here is that Mr. Beale tells me all the Tea Partiers at his office have pulled all of their 401(k) money out of the market. ALL of it. Since then, the stock market has like doubled. Suckaz! So bazillionaires like Harold Simmons are getting rich while Tea Partiers like the idiots who work with my husband are losing out and will have a smaller nut when retirement rolls around. Guess we know where the future Wal-Mart Greeters of America will come from.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
“Speaking of, the big joke here is that Mr. Beale tells me all the Tea Partiers at his office have pulled all of their 401(k) money out of the market.”
Probably put it in gold coins, per all the ads on Fox. God help them.
Southern Beale
@Martin:
I know this, I do. I just need to be reminded of it every now and then. I remember telling my Wingnut Friend that the cards are stacked in favor of the wealthy and if you have a lot of money it’s really hard to get rid of it. But if you don’t have that much it’s really really easy to lose it all. He looked at me like I was crazy.
* SIGH *
Cthulhu
If theres any convincing that we need higher tax rates on the rich, its this article. Too much money and free time on their hands.
Keith G
Wait. I thought we could no longer agree with Frank Rich after he was critical of Obama.
I take it he is persona grata this week.
Cato
That’s right–nice, fat stacks of corporate cash flowing our way this year.
gaz
@Forum Transmitted Disease: Also, have you noticed that the people that peddle the white-supremacy nonsense seem on every level, to be the last people capable make that case? Look at these clowns! Especially neckbeard, he’s special. These pics look culled from peopleofwalmart.com. I normally hate to be so shallow, but you know? fuckin hell.
eemom
Y’all people are gonna give yourselves ulcers if you keep hanging on the every utterance of every fucking control troll in the emmessemm.
And Rich is a concern troll extraordinaire, make no mistake.
Just keep in mind: if it ain’t a horse race, they. lose. Every fucking one of ’em.
gaz
/pats Taco on head.
run along now. the adults are having a discussion.
Cthulhu
@gaz:
Like having the keys to the freakin house weren’t ENOUGH evidence for the cops.
I’m embarrassed for my former profession.
Amir Khalid
@Cato:
You forgot to say “BWA HA HA HA!”
FlipYrWhig
@Cato: Um, the whole raison d’etre of the historical Roman Cato was his flinty, dispassionate integrity and unwillingness to kowtow to imperial power. Not really the kind of guy who would spend the majority of his time gloating over idly rich people’s dirty money. Maybe you should be posting as “Sybarite.”
eemom
Is it just me, or is there an increasing squeak of desperation in the little troll’s blusterous bombasts?
Egg Berry
Some front-pager should check out this website: NewsJack. Remix the news:
eemom
@Cato:
Still, you should leave nothing to chance. Go hand over your piggy bank to Uncle Karl NOW.
And ask your mom to sign over your allowance.
Todd Dugdale
So these guys are going to run ads screaming “failed President!” Everyone has heard that before.
If the magic words “failed President” didn’t change someone’s mind the first few times that they heard it, it’s unlikely those magic words will suddenly work the 2431st time that they hear them.
Like most Republican base appeals, they only work on those who are already on their side. It will gin up those people into a frothing rage, but those outside of the Republican base are pretty sick of the wingnut rage phenomenon already.
Also, DVRs and the mute button.
FlipYrWhig
@Cato: Fine, but the UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH!!1~ONE line is the last thing that would come from the mouth of Cato the Censor. He believed in asceticism. It’d be like calling yourself St. Francis.
Sly
@FlipYrWhig:
Cato the Younger was one of the more decrepit slumlords of the late Republican period, who crowded hundreds of proletarii into firetrap tenements. Perhaps not as disgusting a piece of shit as Cicero, but he certainly was up there. And the animating principle of the “optimate” faction (we’re talking about a group of aristocrats who literally called themselves “the best men”), from whom all the so-called anti-imperialists like Cato and Cicero are drawn, was to limit the power of the Tribunes and popular assemblies.
So, yeah, I think the name is apt.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
Cato the elder was also known for his unreasoning hatred of Carthage, the destruction of which he called for constantly.
Thanks in part to Cato’s influence, Rome started the third Punic War, despite Carthage not actually being any threat. When Carthage was sacked, about a half million inhabitants were slaughtered. The 50k or so survivors were sold into slavery.
So obviously the paid troll finds this man inspiring. It’s the dream of any good fascist to see those he irrationally hates slaughtered by the thousands for the profit of aristocrats.
satanicpanic
Cato is a parody for sure. It was bragging about all the pro-Romney pop-up ads that are going to flood the net.
cmorenc
@BGinCHI:
However, revolutionary changes in technologically-enabled social communication don’t necessarily continue to evolve in unilaterally beneficial fashion. Take the internet itself, about which back in the mid to late 90s, many early net gurus were crowing about how its nature defied anyone’s ability to censor or control it, how it facilitated private, anonymous use, and so on. And yet, big entertainment and communications companies are actively trying to gain the right to preferentially control bandwith allocation in favor of their own purposes, and it’s not only become increasingly difficult to surf the net without leaving identifiable tracks or exposing yourself to exploitative or even outright larcenous malware, but modern commerce has come to depend on being able to track your detailed preferences. Don’t be so sure that, should the GOP gain control of the trifecta of the Presidency and both houses of Congress in 2012 that within four to eight years they and their business/political allies won’t be able to figure out ways to preferentially facilitate politically and commercially friendly uses of the net and communications systems and preferentially discourage politically unfriendly uses. Structure net bandwith/usage charges such as to make sites like DKos intimidatingly costly to maintain. You might answer that wouldn’t the same policies likewise cripple RedState too? The reply is that the right (particularly the billionaires financing the right) don’t really need Redstate to politically organize and communicate the way the progressive side does sites like Kos and Balloon Juice.
AA+ Bonds
Does Haim Saban count as white or
Oh wait, he’s friends with Hillary Clinton so he doesn’t count to liberals ahahahahaha
pragmatism
Dear university which employs DougJ,
In the future, please do not allow DougJ to work outside of your ivy covered walls. He gets bored and spoof-trolls relentlessly. Whilst confined within your lovely learning centre, he only semi-trolls, which we can handle.
Love,
Me
dmsilev
@FlipYrWhig: At the very least, Cato should show some respect for his current namesake and replace his old tagline of VICTORY! with ‘Obambi Delanda Est’.
AA+ Bonds
Man I should sock puppet with interesting names so people can teach me stuff
I don’t know Plutarch for shit, my fetish as a kid was Tacitus
eemom
12 years old, tops. I’d bet my minimum wage Starbucks paycheck on it.
AA+ Bonds
@Cato:
Aint it side-splitting that the media pretended like Romney wasnt his until he was good and ready for them to do it
He is one nasty bitch, ooo Karl <3
AA+ Bonds
But I mean if anyone would ever know if it happened, I would put money that Crossroads has already helped Romney 2008 in quasi-legal ways and there aint shit anyone can do about it, not even donors
Because they were all bound to come courting
There still aint anyone like Rove on the left…
Anne Laurie
I know y’all love playing with the Cato troll, but by my rules, three comments in a row peddling marketing garbage meets the dictionary definition of spam.
AA+ Bonds
Rut roh dissent on my political blog!!
J
And not to be forgotten: All this money is spent creating and sustaining a parasitical class of slanderers, liars and race baiters. The money would actually be better spent paying poor people to have babies, drive Cadillacs and eat T bone steaks–and other staples of wingnut mythology.
FlipYrWhig
@Sly: Ooh, I didn’t know that… I know more about The Elder, the guy who’d rather kill himself than acknowledge being defeated by Caesar. Maybe the resident troll admires that too!
Joseph Nobles
@Cato: There are goddam political ads in front of cat videos on Youtube!! 50 second goddam cat videos get a cocksucking 60 second political ad first!
And it’s only April. I may not have the strength.
AA+ Bonds
At least repost Cato’s Karl Rove story, Christ, you people can’t live in la la land the whole year
Mike G
My dream is that these old geezers saturate TV with so much advertising that they piss everyone off and make their favored candidate toxic.
A negative object lesson in rule by the rich will not do Rmoney’s campaign good.
AA+ Bonds
A totally normal Reuters story about Karl Rove that liberals should read
Patricia Kayden
Let the old geezers spend as much as they want. Whenever I see righties dissing President Obama, I just roll my eyes and think back to the Bush eight-year tragicomedy.
The only things that are guaranteed if Romneybot wins is a war with Iran (and possibly with some other countries) and a huge tax cut for him and his friends.
Chris
@Xboxershorts:
It’s a hell of a thing where movement conservatives have managed to hijack the media, AND simultaneously tell everyone that it was hijacked and shouldn’t be trusted (thus making people flock to “their” even-more-right-wing news organs).
It sure beats the hell out of the old Nazi and Soviet propaganda models.
Mnemosyne
@AA+ Bonds:
Karl Rove’s record as a campaign genius is not as unspotted as he (and the media) would like you to believe. His most notable success was with George W. Bush, who (despite what liberals want to believe) was actually very, very good at running for elective office.
History has shown that when Rove has a dud candidate to run, his candidate loses. Romney has even less charm and charisma than Bush did, and Bush lost the popular vote in 2000.
So, no, I’m not worried about Rove affecting Obama. What I am worried about with Rove — and you should be, too — is him torpedoing Senate and House races. That’s why he’s running around talking about what a BMOC he is with Romney — it’s to distract the media’s attention from the hundreds of millions he’s pouring into Congressional races where the Democrats don’t have the huge warchest that Obama does.
muddy
No pravda in the izvestia, and no izvestia in the pravda.
Sly
@FlipYrWhig:
AFAIK, most conservative and libertarian pseudo-intellectuals identify with Cato the Younger, mostly because he’s one of the great martyrs for aristocratic privilege.
karen
Obama may be raising a certain amount on his own but the big donors aren’t giving to the Super Pac and there is no way he can compete with Romney in that regard. He’s got billions going against him and I’m hoping that he can raise enough money to counter act that. What worries me more though was this new study that says that 60 percent don’t intend to vote because they’re disengaging with the whole process because of the super pacs. Nothing really matters more than that because you can bet that the Obama haters won’t disengage.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of compassion
@gaz: This. I recently spent some time (not my idea) around the local Grand Poobah, or some such shit, of the area KKK. Pig-ignorant sumbitch has 3 adult children. One’s in prison. The other two are IV drug users and welfare frauds. I just keep wanting to ask what it is that he thinks is so superior about him and people like him.
twiffer
@gaz: makes perfect sense to me. it’s all they have to cling to. sad, if it wasn’t so rotten.
gluon1
Norm Ornstein talked about these sugar daddies recently: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTt5VbHUxNA#t=5340