From the Hill (via Kombiz)
About $35 million of the $90 million spent by the RNC has gone to direct mail and telemarketing — its trademark methods of rounding up donors. The DNC has spent about $11 million on those two things, but has raised nearly as much as the RNC.
This may not mean that the RNC is stupid to blow so much on direct mail and telemarketing, it may just mean the Dems raise money better over the internet.
The other big take-away from the article is that GOP donors are going around the established committees and giving directly to candidates and Club For Growth type groups.
Morbo
And then you’ve got Freedom Works, advertising with banner ads on liberal blogs.
Face
Outstanding news for President McCain.
ricky
The direct mail and telemarketing firms control the RNC.
Zam
Well it also helps to be the party in power, they tend to get a bit of a fund raising boost.
The Grand Panjandrum
I think you’ll see more of this from the Dems side this year. I personally will not give one cent of my money to the DCCC, DSCC, or the DNC. They don’t deserve it. I will continue to give to individuals who represent my views, or at least as close to my views as possible.
Alan Grayson just reported raising $850 thousand last quarter. I know Joe the Shouter and the guy running against both raised massive amounts of money in a relatively short period of time. The lesson it seems is that you want to be a loud mouth asshole, or the opponent, and you can raise money hand over fist.
ricky
@Morbo:
I would respond but I have to run over to My Gun Spot.com.
Their ad for social networking for gun owners on this vey blog is just too compelling for me to pass up.
In parting let me say liberal government is just a waste of money compared to the private sector.
Mike Kay
But, but, but…. the democrats are in… ah, forget it.
MacsenMifune
Will the pattern hold up that every time the club for growth candidate gets picked in the primary, they then lose to the Democrats in the election. Or is there one district crazy enough to elect one of these wingnuts.
ppcli
In other words, the core audience of the Republican party consists of the people who use land mail and have land-phone lines, but don’t use the internet. You’ve got to like the long-range prospects of such an organization. It’s a good thing for the Democrats that hospital geriatric wards don’t allow political advertising directed at their patients or the Democrats would be doomed.
MikeJ
@MacsenMifune: One CD crazy enough? Michelle Bachman’s. A state craze enough to elect one to the Senate? I would say that they’d have to moderate a *little* to win a statewide race, then I remembered the existence of Oklahoma.
Mike Kay
What really pissed me off about Obama’s statement, yesterday — HE NEVER MENTIONED THE “PUBLIC OPTION”! NOT ONCE!!
Okay, seriously. For the past week wingnuts have been screaming Obama doesn’t say the word “terror” enough, and therefore it signals he doesn’t take terrorism seriously.
But ya know what, that’s exactly what the Firebaggers and their fellow travelers have been doing for the past six months. They would literally count the number of times Obama said “public option” and if he didn’t say it more that three times in a public event, they would scream, WHY ISN’T HE TALKING ABOUT THE PUBLIC OPTION. And then they would plunge into a hate spiral on how mentioning the public option only three times was secret code to his evil BIG insurance masters.
Yes, this is along way of saying there’s no difference btwn the Teabaggers and the Firebaggers.
Alex S.
The Democrats could have had a really tough time this fall. But thanks to the Republicans they won’t. I guess all the fatalism and blockheadedness of that party didn’t come for free (Remember they only elected Michael Steele because they wanted to avoid the bad press after electing South Carolina GOP chair and white supremacist Katon Dawson. And they needed a black guy to make up for 40 years of Southern Strategy.).
Citizen_X
In Republican land, it is ALWAYS 1980, and time for Ronald Reagan, tax cuts, and MORNING IN AMERICA.
And here’s a real attempt to bring back Reagan to lead us to greatness.
Incertus
@ppcli: Exactly what I was thinking.
Persia
@Morbo: I confess the gun owners social network ad is pretty win.
Incertus
@MikeJ: Kansas’s two aren’t much of a prize either and neither are Texas’s. Maybe Oklahoma is the Saudi Arabia oil patch of nutbaggery, and Texas and Kansas have been slant-drilling into it.
Mike Kay
This is another reason why Tucker Carlson’s internet site will fail. Most rank and file wingnuts don’t read. They just don’t. I mean their whole basis is anti-intellectualism, which doesn’t comport with curiosity and reading.
jrg
For a group of people who think the Postal Service sucks, they sure do use it a lot. The RNC is at least a decade behind the fund raising curve. I hope they are happy with their treatment of Ron Paul, who is the only GOPer who has managed to raise any reasonable sum from folks on the internet. Morons.
Gotta love the comments on the Hill site, too:
Magical pixie dust must have paid for Medicare part D and the Iraq war. You really can fool some of the people all of the time.
KCinDC
John, while the occasional conservative ad can be offensive, at least you’re getting them to waste money that could otherwise be doing more damage than the psychic trauma a few glimpses of Ann Coulter may cause us.
I’m extremely thankful that you’re sparing us the belly fat and yellow teeth ads that so many other blogs are subjecting us to.
Bill
“This may not mean that the RNC is stupid to blow so much”
It could possibly reflect that the R’s have no concept of appropriate budgeting.
MikeJ
@Incertus: Oklahoma
Lev
Supposedly the party congressional committees’ fundraising are heavily tilted toward the Dems as well. I find it richly ironic that the Big Money Party might well wind up being outspent by the Democrats.
I also think that Republicans are in worse shape than the Democrats. FDL has no real constituency and there isn’t a sizable part of the Democratic constituency that is trying to shiv the party’s chances. I, for one, embrace the Teabaggers, as by opposing the Republicans they are hurting them, whether they convince the GOP to follow them off the cliff or not.
jeffreyw
@Persia: I hear they are heavy into promoting “Dueling Fridays” as a fundraiser. Heavy betting and the house takes a cut. It was winner take all till they got involved in the sport.
Sly
@MacsenMifune:
There’s one in almost every state.
On a related note, I don’t think I’m the only one who is amused with the wingnuts who want to now primary Parker Griffith. The best way to tempt additional conservative Democrats to switch parties is, of course, to immediately threaten the first one who does it.
Here’s hoping that Mike Pence becomes Minority Leader. He’s just the kind of asshole that they deserve.
ricky
I got a phone call from the RNC asking me if I wanted government control of my health care. I said I didn’t.
A week later I got a letter from the RNC asking for money
to fight big government control of health care. It was delivered right to my door by the U.S. mail! Very efficient.
glocksman
@Lev:
Actively shiv the party? No.
Are there divisions? Most certainly.
TPM story on strains in the party
If enough House progressives can’t swallow the Senate’s ‘cadillac tax’ bullshit and vote no along with the Republicans, the bill will fail in the House.
MikeJ
@ricky: Just wait. The singing telegram comes next week.
GReynoldsCT00
@Mike Kay:
No kidding, did you see Bobo’s recent column (Jan 5) with his many references references to the “educated class”?
“The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year…”
It kind of annoyed me, but there’s some truth in it…
beltane
@MacsenMifune: They’re going after Bob Bennett (R-UT) in the Senate. Being that it’s Utah, even the craziest of teabaggers will win that seat.
ricky
@Citizen_X:
Thanks for the Onion link. Considering they have nominated Dole and McCain, why not go with the Living Dead who have proven they can win?
Darryl
This is 100% wrong. Wingnuts read plenty, they just read junk. Instapundit is popular. The Corner is popular. WingnutDaily is popular. Newsmax is popular. Fox News’s website gets more readers than ABCNews, the BBC, USA Today, and the Washington Post.
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/msnbc-and-cnn-top-global-news-sites-in-march/
Face
Pretty much any district in the state of Idaho.
BGK
I don’t think the Republican efficiency at scrubbing voter rolls applies to their own mailing lists.
My father, a lifelong registered Democrat who couldn’t recall ever having voted for a Republican, who would’ve fallen off the chair laughing at seeing McCain run for president, and (most importantly) had been dead for two-plus years by the time of the 2008 election, got carpet-bombed with McCain mailers. Most of them asking for money. He was a veteran, and though he had scorn for the amateur Audie Murphys of the VFW, et. al., that must’ve gotten him tagged as a likely McCain voter.
My mother flipped out every time she got one of these mailers. She talked to the precinct captain, who laughed and told her not to stop them, so McCain’s campaign could go on wasting its money. I further counseled her to take advantage of that return-postage-guaranteed bit and return the envelope with something heavy and worthless inside.
ricky
@MikeJ:
Do they recruit the singers from the chorus of Up With People? I’d donate almost half as much as it cost me for a ticket to that show.
GReynoldsCT00
@Darryl:
I saw that study, but it’s also true, as Mike says, the read junk that parrots what they want to read/hear and to an extent lack the curiosity for other points of view, or just plain facts.
Morans.
Yutsano
@Face: Amazingly enough, Idaho does have one small liberal bastion, up north in Latah county where the University of Idaho is. It’s the one district in the state that consistently elects Democrats to the state legislature. Too bad it doesn’t get them a deeper bench in Idaho.
AkaDad
I believe the difference between them is hot sauce.
soonergrunt
@Darryl: You’re not taking into account the ratio of pictures to text on these sites. I bet that skews your numbers a bit, Darryl.
Also, one could literally spend hours reading all of the ads for pen is enlarge ment, herbal cia lis, Iraqi gold certificates, and secret CIA tricks to murder people with bare hands and not read a shred of ‘content’ on either wingnut daily or newsmin.
Darryl
@GReynoldsCT00: They do lack curiosity. But saying a right wing website can’t succeed is contrary to the evidence.
phoebes-in-santa fe
@The Grand Panjandrum: I’m the same, Grand. I am a big Dem donor but I ONLY donate through ActBlue and I give directly to the candidates, with a 5% tip to ActBlue.
I don’t think the Republicans have an ActBlue equivilent, do they?
dj spellchecka
possibly related to the gop’s use of snail mail and line lines:
in a story about a downturn in the country music business, npr said, “A recent Nielsen survey showed that only about half the nation’s core country-music fans even have Internet access at home.”
Darryl
NYtimes bestsellers:
Hardcover Nonfiction
Top 5 at a Glance
1. GOING ROGUE, by Sarah Palin
2. HAVE A LITTLE FAITH, by Mitch Albom
3. ARGUING WITH IDIOTS, written and edited by Glenn Beck, Kevin Balfe and others
4. TRUE COMPASS, by Edward M. Kennedy
5. OPEN, by Andre Agassi
Saying wingers read crap is true. Saying wingers don’t read is nonsense.
dj spellchecka
@Yutsano..according to national journal, that idaho district you’re discussing is one of the top 100 counties in the country in terms of percentage of voters with college degrees..
Chat Noir
@BGK: You know, I’ve recently started getting Republican crap in the mail (the last one from Minnesota’s favorite whackjob, Michele Bachmann). I have no idea how that happened unless my dad signed my name to the stuff he gets from them — however, I don’t think he’s vindictive or bright enough to do that. It pisses me off just the same because I feel dirty for them even having my name on their mailing list.
Mike Kay
@Darryl:
If you go to RedState and look at their sitemeter, they receive 75,000 hits per day. If you go the Kos, they get 700,000 hits per day.
Here. Here’s an 8 minute expose of the complete illiteracy of teabaggers at a Palin “book” signing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKKKgua7wQk
I mean, JEEEEZ, when palin, herself, was asked by Katie Couric what does she read, she couldn’t name a single newspaper or magazine. Nothing.
TruthOfAngels
@ricky:
I know what you’re sayin’. I saw an ad for a Coulter tome on dKos once.
All at once I was convinced of the evil of gay Muslim abortion.
Darryl
@Mike Kay: Do you want to stick by your original claim that Tucker Carlson’s site can’t possibly succeed, when Instapundit, the Corner, Newsmax, FoxNews, etc, can?
licensed to kill time
@Darryl:
I always get so depressed when I peruse the bestseller list.
Darryl
…which is more than Balloon Juice gets. Is this site not succeeding?
Mike Kay
@Darryl:
So why was Palin unable to name a single newspaper, a single magazine, a single website, a single journal that she read when she was asked by Katie Couric, “what do you read”?
Nothing. Nada. Zlitch.
Notorious P.A.T.
@Darryl:
Those “books” are best-sellers because right wing think-tanks by them by the ton to give away.
Also, I flipped through Beck’s latest masterpiece and it had more pictures than a Spider-Man comic.
M. Carey
Looks like “fund raising” is simply another profit center for well-connected Rethugs.
Darryl
@licensed to kill time: Oh I know. My winger relatives buy those books, and spend hours a day on Newsmax, gun forums, creationist forums, etc. They’d be much better off if they didn’t read.
Darryl
@Mike Kay: That’s an anecdote about one person. Do better. And please answer my question.
Yutsano
@Darryl: Hate to butt in, but I’m gonna call false equivalency here. John does not run this site for a living or profit (although since all he has to do is snap his fingers and we pay up I occasionally wonder why) and these other sites are exclusive for-profit enterprises. It will be a massive money pit until it either gets its footing or withers into history from lack of page views and funding. That more than anything will make or break it.
Mike Kay
@Darryl:
apples and oranges.
I was comparing the most popular blog on the left with the most popular blog on the right.
Darryl
@Mike Kay: Do you want to stick by your original claim that Tucker Carlson’s site can’t possibly succeed, when Instapundit, the Corner, Newsmax, FoxNews, etc, can?
Mike Kay
@Darryl:
One person? She’s a governor. She was running to be a heartbeat away from being the leader of the free world. She’s the leading figure of the teabaggers. She’s your leader. And by her own admission, she doesn’t read.
Darryl
She’s not my leader, I’m an ACLU card carrier (member # 60600023) and an O-bot. Please answer my question.
Mike Kay
@Darryl:
Yeah. Tucker’s intends to compete with Huffington Post, not with the tiny blogs you mention. And no, Tucker’s blog will never ever draw the numbers of HuffPo, simply because the vast majority of wingers don’t read, as personified by the leader of your party, sarah palin.
Darryl
Actually I don’t care if you answer my question. You said a stupid thing about websites and then made up a stupid thing about me. I’ll talk to sensible people.
Nellcote
@BGK:
This could be a fun little hobby!
Darryl
for the sensible people out there:
http://www.sitemeter.com/default.asp?action=stats&site=s11instapundit
Yutsano
@Nellcote: This is sounding more and more like an interesting twist on Operation Chaos.
Darryl
@Nellcote: I wonder what the rules on that are. Can you tape a brick to the envelope, and have the GOP pay for it? That would be fun. I’d drag an old car (I live in the South) out to the mail box and tape the return envelope to it :-)
Mike Kay
@Darryl:
Instapundit isn’t a traditional blog – it’s html version of a twitter feed.
But let me ask you, do YOU think Tucker’s blog will become as big as HuffPo in two years?
zzyzx
It’s not that Sarah Palin doesn’t read – although she might not – as much as she was scared that the question was a trap and didn’t have a pat answer that couldn’t be used against her.
Conservatism is rapidly becoming identity politics so that question is more dangerous that you might think.
Mike Kay
@zzyzx:
How hard would it have been to say, “I read my local paper, the Anchorage Daily News and the Wall Street Journal, Katie”
Mnemosyne
@Darryl:
I know you can send an unpackaged coconut — it was on “Mythbusters” (though they used regular postage, not someone’s pre-paid envelope). There may be a weight limit for USPS pickups, so I’d go for, say, one of the tires.
licensed to kill time
I think Darryl was making a general point that RW websites can be/are successful, not that Tucker’s Tall Tales necessarily will be.
Darryl
@TruthOfAngels:I always wondered if Coulter believes the crazy things she says, or not. I lean toward not, especially when her latest outrageous thing, about the 9’11 widows, just happened to occur days before her latest book hit the stands.
Mnemosyne
I think we’re getting a little bogged down by insisting on a word count before it can be called “reading.” Darryl has a point — conservatives may not read for the same reasons liberals to (ie to gain information) but it’s silly to say they “don’t read.” Who the heck is buying all of those stupid Dan Brown and Nicholas Sparks books if conservatives don’t read?
(Which reminds me of a story that Julia Sweeney tells in “Letting Go of God” about her then-boyfriend, a firm believer in intelligent design, saying, “It’s the eye. What good is half of an eye?” She then felt compelled to go out and read all about eyes and discovered that, yes, partial eyes are pretty common and useful. That’s the difference between the way conservatives read and the way (most) liberals read.)
Darryl
@licensed to kill time: yup.
Darryl
@Mnemosyne: I used to know girl named Lise, who by all exterior appearances was the archetypal blonde, cherub-cheeked, innocent, sweet-as-apple-pie southern girl, but who would listen to Tool all day and go on huge, vitriolic rants about how terrible Nicholas Sparks books were. I miss her.
zzyzx
@Mike Kay: probably not very but I think she was surprised by the question, was scared to answer it lest it piss someone off, and choked.
BGK
@Darryl:
Well, you can’t go crazy. The return postage is most times specified as “first class letter,” and there are defined limits. You might give your letter carrier a good laugh, but something obviously overweight will get left in your mailbox.
Still, a 3.5 ounce letter will nick them for nearly a dollar, and that done in bulk could get costly, quickly.
Mike Kay
@licensed to kill time:
my point was that the vast majority of wingers don’t read, as personified by Bush and Palin.
My goodness, Bush didn’t even know what “google” was in a September 2007 interview with CNBC. Bush is proudly anti-intellectual.
Also, I’m not a fan of Kos, but it does have 8 to 10 times more “readers” than redstate.
I’m not a fan of Ana Marie Cox, but her twitter feed has 5 times more “readers” than instapundit.
Dr. Morpheus
@ppcli:
Maybe it’s a downstate Illinois thing, but when I went to visit my Mom at the nursing home EVERY TV, and I mean EVERY TV there was tuned to Fox News.
We had to bring in a TV for our Mom who is a faithful Keith Olbermann watcher.
Although we seriously debated buying her a 63″ LCD TV running continuous loops of Keith and Rachael.
But that would have been very mean.
Darryl
@Mnemosyne: Intelligent Design is another place you see wingers reading lots and lots of junk. When I worked at a Borders 10 years ago it was depressing how many copies of the execrable Darwin’s Black Box were sold.
Darryl
@Dr. Morpheus: I go to a local gym that’s a lot cheaper than the others ($100 for 6 mos vs $45 a month for the others) and the only problem with it is, if this one winger dude is working the desk, nearly all the tvs are on Fox News. When I go there, as I need to do in the next few mins, if I see his motorcycle parked out front, it makes me lean to just going to the library and then Starbucks.
Mnemosyne
@Mike Kay:
I have to admit that I was pretty convinced by the hypothesis I saw that Bush is dyslexic or has another, similar learning disability. It would explain a whole lot, like why everything had to be boiled down to one page and then read aloud to him.
licensed to kill time
@Mike Kay:
Perhaps we are getting hung up in our definition of “reading”. I agree that what RWingers “read” is not what I consider “reading” but they do actually look at letters on a page or screen and translate them into…….something. You can tell by the proliferation of the Jesus Key comments.
Mike Kay
@Mnemosyne:
But it goes on, and on, and on.
Reagan wasn’t dumb, but he didn’t like to read, as well.
I guess that’s a good example, just because you don’t read on a frequent basis, doesn’t make you dumb, but nevertheless, by definition if you rarely read, then you’re not much of a reader.
Mike Kay
@licensed to kill time:
How is it most religious followers can’t name the 10 commandments? It’s not as if it’s a long list. They can’t even name the 1st commandment, which is really, really easy on to remember, “thy shall have no other gods before me”. My hypothesis is, they don’t like to read, and therefore they have never reread the commandments enough in order to commit them to memory.
mellowjohn
i’m not sure that perusing anything with “by glenn beck” on the cover qualifies as “reading.”
Mike Kay
@mellowjohn:
You mean Beck is wrong when he says John D. Rockefeller was a communist?
maus
I hope that we’re doing this as well. Progressives need to stop pretending that the DNC/DLC has any interest in what we have to say when the cash is already in their pocket.
Mike in NC
Per “Nixonland”, trashing your opponents via a direct mail campaign is a tried and true GOP tactic, and it’s worked surprisingly well in many cases. Also, bear in mind that Karl Rove got fat and rich in the direct mail business before he became a professional ratfucker. Old habits die hard.
dave anderson
Easiest explanation is Occam’s Razor — both party organizations are doing their best to fundraise effeciently, given their differing core small donor demographics. For the GOP, that means targeting old folks with traditional methods of direct mail and telemarketing. For the Democrats, that means hitting up the Internet for the still-working creative class types. Both parties will use the others’ dominant method, but for a lesser haul and a less efficient use of resources.
That’s my guess, demographics leading to economics
Mary
@phoebes-in-santa fe: Regarding donating to Act Blue, I hate to go all FDL freakout on this issue too, but you all do know that Jane Hamsher is in control of Act Blue, so any tips you’re giving are going to her? Why would any Democrat give money to any entity associated with Jane Hamsher?
Between Hamsher and the DNC, DSCC, DCCC, I’ll take the D’s any day.
Adrian
@Mary: That’s incorrect on a number of levels.
ActBlue is an independent Democratic organization, not an appendage of FDL, the DCCC, or any other Democratic body you’d care to name. We provide our tools to all Democrats.
The tips you give to ActBlue are an essential part of our model. They help us pay the bills, and, while this should go without saying, they go to ActBlue, not Jane Hamsher.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
Every two weeks I get a call from the DNC or some other such groups looking for bucks. I always say I only contribute online.
Hopefully if I do this enough, they’ll get the friggin hint and *stop calling me*.
Paul Burke - Author Journey Home
The MIDDLE CLASS should NOT be paying for this – more money needs to STAY in OUR paychecks so we can save, invest or spend to help bring the economy back. If these political weaklings tax our employee based healthcare to pay for this bill – that means a tax on the Middle Class and I will be furious.
Allegations of price-fixing, bid-rigging, exclusive sales contracts, local price cutting to freeze out competitors, and the dividing up of markets need to be fully explored through subpoenas and depositions (a law suit by all 50 States and joined by the Feds) so we can get rid of our dysfunctional corporate health care system that’s choking the economy to death.
Federal workers and retirees can select plans at a cost range from $100 dollars a month for the cheapest individual coverage to $500 dollars for the most expensive family plan. That plan should be available to EVERYONE.
I’m voting “MY” pocket book – I want lower premiums and less money taken out of my paycheck – if they want to help spur on the economy they will make sure this happens for the majority.
The bottom line is that 90% of the wealth concentrated in 1% of the population is no way to run a country, but a heck of a way to establish a royalty ruling class. Yacht sales can not sustain 350 million people.
I’m for the public option, competition and a level playing field or break up the big insurers like we did AT&T.
A slavish focus on profit margin might be good for the individual or a business, but it is one helluva lousy way to “govern” a Country. The GOP being a wholly owned subsidiary of Corporate America has a hard time with that concept.
Paul Burke
Author-Journey Home