Oh no! The Republican party’s coffers are low in cash because people don’t want to donate to them!
The Republican National Committee disclosed that it had $9.1 million in cash on hand as of Oct. 30, the lowest amount for the RNC in any Federal Election Commission report since February 2015. That compares with about $20 million at the same point in the 2016 election cycle and about $61 million four years ago, when Trump was in the White House.
The Democratic National Committee reported having $17.7 million as of Oct. 30, almost twice as much as the Republican Party, with one year before the election.
This shouldn’t be surprising. The party is in disarray, they have an uninspiring field of candidates, and they’ve got Mr Polarizing Asshole himself, Donald Trump, waiting in the wings and making a lot of noise. If I were a Republican, I’d either be waiting cautiously with little confidence that the Republicans can win, or I’d be a frenetic lunatic throwing my money at some random bozo who promised to pander to my biases. It’s not a good situation for coherent campaigning, and the Republicans know it.
In an interview, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said that donors are currently more focused on giving to individual candidates during the presidential primary and that the party’s fortunes will improve once there’s a nominee.
“I think there’s more donors just fully committed to their candidate right now, saying I am all in, and once the nominee is set, I’ll be there. That’s what I hear more than anything. And they’re really solidly in the camps of their candidate, which is normal,” McDaniel said. “There’s nothing unusual about this, because they know that once their candidate gets in that we will merge and that we’ll be working together to win the White House.”
Yeah, right. Once they go eeny-meeny-miney-mo and pick Ramaswamy, or Desantis, or Haley, the donors will come flocking. None of those candidates are going to thrill the electorate. Maybe Trump would fire up some segment, but the MyPillow guy is pretty much broke and won’t be cutting them a big check.
Also, they have to worry that if it is Trump, he has a different plan about what to do with the money.
I think McDaniel’s comment about it being “normal” that donors are supporting candidates and not the party–in spite of the Dems not having the same problem–is a sign of how broken conservative politics are. There is next to no feeling of being a team, working towards common goals. Just factious little cliques vying for power.
Also, billionaires are aware that money donated to republican causes is likely to be grift-stolen and/or used to pay the party’s mounting “crime tax”
The Republican voters keep being promised things that the majority of them are against, so there goes a lot of that money. Their federal party’s nominee keeps sounding more unhinged and desperate, with his legal prospects circling the drain, which in part is responsible for his shrinking crowd sizes at his rallies. Their national candidate is also promising an end to democracy, and is promising to waste their money once in office, which increasingly looks like a moot point as his odds of being a free man on election day keep shrinking. And at this point, it’ll be too late for them to change horses in the presidential race.
Nationally, a lot of the bashing of existing and potential Republican candidates is coming from a lot of other existing and potential Republican candidates.
Their surprise at their current donor status is a damning indictment of their ability to anticipate whatever comes next.
If only that were true. If only.. Sigh.
How many bigoted billionaires – or bigots and billionaires do we need? Ideally I’d say zero. Zero billionaires and zero bigots. /Cap’n Obvs?
They scream about how much money they need and how much of their time that they have to spend to raise money rather than doing the “people’s” work. Yet, after being elected, they do nothing to change the laws about caimpaign finance, weird, huh!
If consultants get paid by a percentage of what they help raise then their only incentive is more, more, more (How do you like it?) further corrupting the process by making catching the big fish more important than chumming the waters for the minnows.
I foresee a split in the GOP, leading to its eventual collapse. It happened in the past with the Whig party, fragmenting into several parties, including the new Republican party and the “Native American party”, aka Know Nothing party and their antics that claimed many lives through violence. Violence on the streets via rioting, violence at the polls and eventually, voter suppression, culminating in a combined riot at the beginning of the Civil War against Union militia units transiting through Baltimore, resulting in martial law being declared and political imprisonments.
But, never fear, to avoid civil strife, the Democratic party wisely chose a winning candidate against both Know Nothing and Republican candidates, going on to win, electing President Biden, erm, Buchanan. Resulting, via his great successes in Republican Abraham Lincoln winning the following election and civil war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know-Nothing_Riot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know-Nothing_Riots_of_1856
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_riot_of_1861
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_parte_Merryman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1856_United_States_presidential_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_presidential_election
I also anticipate a full court press against mail-in balloting, far greater than previously.
Don’t be so hard on the billionaires, they are the job creators of the economy.
Like, a big corporation created LOTS of jobs in Raccoon City, but all the libruls can do is complain, complain, complain.
I would celebrate if the GOP had to declare bankruptcy. However, the DNC isn’t all that much better off apparently. Because I’ve donated to Democrat candidates in the past, my spam folder get lots of email from Democrat candidates as well as the DNC. Obama, Hillary, and I stay in close touch. One of the key themes in these emails is how their fund raising efforts are running short, not meeting their targets to get Federal money, etc. Clearly the money game is a major part of the problem with politics in this country. Not only does it cost a lot to run a campaign, they are in continuous campaign mode.
Marcus Ranum — I find it difficult to believe that the billionaire oligarchs give a rat’s ass about the “crime tax.” It’s the price they pay to get the protection they want for their own crimes. What the GOP…or DNC…does with the money is immaterial as long as they deliver the goods.
The donors all know that it looks like Trump is going to be the guy. The rich are not generally stupid. They know that if Trump gets the nomination he probably loses. Even worse from their point of view, donating to Trump last time didn’t have any payoff. Trump was an erratic populist who didn’t care what he promised in private, was well known for not paying his debts in general and was so bad at management he couldn’t carry through even when he tried.
If by some chance somebody other then Trump wins the nomination then there will be at least some flurry of donations.
Hmm….I don’t know how it works in Norway or Denmark but in Sweden corporations may only donate hardware like paper etc to parties. Individuals can donate cash.
And (drumroll) parties that are represented in parliament and in regional and municipal councils get public money in proportion to their voter share.
This is intended to strenghten democracy and reduce the lure of corruption.
But not everything is sunny. The xenophobe party (SD) got >20% of the voter share last election, after a shameless campaign where they promised cheaper gas.
And their party leader recently suggested razing mosques where alleged extremists were active (he may finally have overreached himself with this statement, even the ruling coalition condemned the idea).
-The $$$ influence of the big companies mostly manifest as support for entities like the conservative think thank/publishing house Timbro.
The social democrats let their media empire go bankrupt in the 1980s because indifference among the top brass, and they never quite recovered.
I’m not happy with the state of affairs, but the Democratic Party is now the party of Big Business, while the GOP is the party of lunatics and traitors. The filthy rich won’t get richer pandering to Republicans anymore, while the Dems have their backs now. It turns out, fiscal responsibility is actually important to people who roll around in mountains of cash.
Billionaires were all created by corruption, ethical bankruptcy, sociopathy and complacency by the sheople.
I see the rtwingnut violent repugnantcants are just throwing hand grenades at anyone who does not agree with them. They are not accomplishing any true governance even though funded by their billionaires. I agree with @11 Artor that democraps are now the party supporting corporate corruption.
Lately, I see tons of articles that say we must support the disastrous duopoly running things and vote for the lesser evil. Because, if we vote our conscience we are dooming braindead biden and supporting tRUMP.
I cannot accept that the ‘murican form of politics is viable. I am angered by all the bullshit shoveled at us by main slime media, criminal healthcare corporations, the bigoted xtian terrorists, etc. The sheople just nod, consume social media and drool. I don’t have a practical answer to all these societal failures. But, I will not comply with the current societal model. I will stand by my ethical standards to the best of my ability. And, share those standards and principles with others.
birgerjohansson @ 7, well at least that group of billionaires have Racoon City covered under their Umbrella.
JM @ 9, more like they don’t want to pay in for a man to get elected to try to run a nation from within a state prison, having foreign leaders strip searched to visit and negotiation with him, etc.
shermanj @ 12, I’m seriously considering the National Razor being a realistic option to our woes.
@13 wzrd1 wrote: I’m seriously considering the National Razor being a realistic option to our woes.
I reply: but National razor refers to at least 2 popular things:
1) The Guillotine, an execution device named after Joseph-Ignace Guillotin
2) National Razor (band), an American punk rock band that formed in 1998 in Baltimore, Maryland.
I assume you don’t think the punk rock band will solve all our problems. And, I’m surprised that tRUMP hasn’t already threatened to use the Guillotine on us.
@ ^shermanj : Guillotines were meant to be merciful in the (cruel) context of their times. Only nobles then could be “mercy” killed quickly with sword or axe beheading. In theory.
Trump & his cultists prefer crueler deaths and more sadism and ones less associated with popular plebian revolutoin than the French example & also some sorta XN cult thing there about guillotines probly out of Francophobic, historic prejudice.
@ 15
I think the Christian obsession with beheading comes from a reference in Revelation 20:4 where it’s mentioned as the Antichrist’s preferred execution method:
What about Pedo-Guy, surely he’s got a few billion in change lying around. They just have to Nazi it up a bit, and all the profit from Xitter will pour into their coffers.
Let me guess;
* Filling the bottomless pit of his legal costs? (The lawyers will want payment up-front, I suspect.)
* Making the interior of his hotels / clubs / houses even more tacky? Maybe the toilet brushes need gold plating.
* Pocket the money and run off to somewhere without an extradition treaty with the USA?
Why would the billionaires donate directly to the party when they own superPACs and can control the messaging themselves?