In US politics, money plays a huge role because of the length of the campaigns and the high cost of TV ads. It is only a minor exaggeration to say that a better predictor than opinion polls of who is going to win a race is to look at which side raised more money. This is why media organizations eagerly report the fund-raising totals that are regularly released, though the relaxing of campaign financing rules means that nowadays a lot of that money can be kept hidden. As a result, the correlation between fund-raising and electoral success was perhaps more true before the narrow 5-4 US Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case in 2010 that prohibited “the government from restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by corporations, including nonprofit corporations, labor unions, and other associations”. That decision opened the floodgates for much more so-called ‘dark money’ than before, so that now even minor candidates in lower tier races can raise huge sums.

One result is that some candidates and parties running campaigns have chosen to live the high life on campaign cash, using it to fund private jet travel, limousines, resorts, and any other aspect of a fancy lifestyle that they thought they could pass off as a campaign expense. For example, this report describes what the Republican National Committee has been spending money on.

Back in 2010, RNC Chair Michael Steele was heavily criticized and eventually lost his position because donors were angry about what they believed was luxurious spending on private jets, floral arrangements, chauffeur services, and member meetings in expensive tropical locales. Donors were used to frugality from the RNC under the George W. Bush administration, when “Karl Rove would bitch if there were flowers on the tables” and staff holiday parties were catered by Chick-fil-A.

Despite Joe Biden’s economy and three straight cycles of election losses, the RNC’s big-spending days are back with a vengeance.

Perhaps because of these losses both RNC donors and committee members are intensely interested in the committee’s finances, particularly the spending. Late last week, RedState was provided a report dated October 7, 2022 that examined RNC’s 2021-22 spending. It calculated more than $500,000 in private jet expenses, $64,000 at clothing retailers, and $321,000 in floral arrangements.
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It is difficult to accurately categorize all of the expenditures because a significant number of transactions seem to be misclassified. For example, nearly $5,000 spent in 2022 at Lululemon, a luxury athletic apparel brand, was classified as “office expense,” as were two expenditures totaling $9,300 at Madison Square Garden in 2017.
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Nearly $400,000 has been spent on event tickets and other entertainment activities, including $30,000 for a private box at a Las Vegas Raiders game, $13,000 for Broadway shows, $9,400 at Madison Square Garden, and $43,000 at Top Golf locations in Texas, Nevada, Virginia, and Maryland.

After spending so much, the RNC now finds itself short of money.

The RNC last week reported $8m in cash to spend in its year-end filing, an amount less than half of what it had when Trump was running for the presidency in 2016 and below what it needs to stand up operations as it prepares to take on Joe Biden in the general election.

The issue for the RNC has been the lack of direct revenue, with small-dollar donors seen to generally prefer to donate directly to the Trump campaign and larger, institutional donors who dislike Trump preferring to donate directly to challengers like Haley, the people said.

The problem for the RNC is that the cult supporters of serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) prefer to give directly to their deal leader than to the RNC, which is viewed by some as pat of the despised political establishment.

In Florida, where Trump has his campaign headquarters, allies of the former president have been wary about working in tandem with the RNC at this stage in the primary even if it would benefit from the infusion of large checks itself, a person familiar with the matter said.

The concern inside the Trump campaign has long been that the RNC is viewed as too institutional by the Maga base, which has become conditioned to distrust entities that are part of the “Washington swamp”. Trump working with the RNC could open him up to attacks from the far right.

This has caused some friction between SSAT and Ronna McDaniel, the head of the RNC, and not-so-subtle attempts to oust her.

Trump’s relationship with McDaniel has also been difficult in recent months, with the former president unimpressed by the RNC’s fundraising. Trump met with McDaniel at his Mar-a-Lago club on Monday evening and while he did not ask her to resign, he told Newsmax in an interview he thought she should step down, the person said.

SSAT has been gunning for McDaniel also because she hasn’t has yet endorsed him. Because the Republican primaries are still ongoing, it makes sense for the head of the RNC to remain formally neutral even as she grovels before him. But that is not enough for SSAT who does not care for such niceties. He has taken umbrage at her attempt to maintain a publicly neutral stance. So now there are reports that she is stepping down from the position.

These attempts have been furthered by other groups loyal to SSAT.

McDaniel faced a week of withering attacks launched by far-right figures spearheaded by the group Turning Point, a glitzy and well-funded organization founded by 30-year-old media figure Charlie Kirk, who was part of an unsuccessful effort to oust McDaniel last year.
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Kirk, who hosts a popular radio show, is part of a faction of conservatives who’ve openly stoked a feud with the RNC, which they have blasted for spending lavishly and being out of touch with the party’s grassroots base. That, they argue, led to losses in 2018 and 2020 as well as underwhelming results in 2022.
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Some Turning Point supporters have become RNC members, while the group is actively recruiting others, an effort that, if successful, would give the group more sway over the direction of the party and perhaps a stronger say in the party’s chair.

“We know a pack of losers when we see it: top to bottom, the entire RNC staff in its current form,” Kirk said Thursday on his radio show.

“They don’t even know what winning is,” he added.

But Turning Point is also guilty of the kind of lavish spending and lack of success that it criticizes the RNC for.

Turning Point is looking to expand its influence and reach beyond the youth movement, with mixed results. The group has struggled in its adopted home state of Arizona, where many of its preferred candidates failed to win in statewide races that many saw as winnable.

Its leaders have also come under scrutiny over their own spending practices, including charter jet travel, offering lucrative salaries and hosting Kirk’s wedding reception in 2021, which also commemorated the organization’s ninth anniversary.

The huge amount of money swilling around in politics has attracted the kind of people who see it as a way of living the high life at the expense of others.

Grifters gotta grift and politics provides them with plenty of opportunities to do so..