Unlike the Blogmaster, if I can’t have a responsible press corps covering our politics — and of course we all know that’s not happening any time in the foreseeable future — I want them to take up as much space as possible detailing exactly how YOOOOGE a collection of idiots, losers & haters now populate the GOP’s Disloyal Opposition. Here’s an excellent example, from Gabriel Sherman for NYMag:
… Rove’s 2012 crash is having profound effects on the 2016 Republican primary. To begin with, George W. Bush’s Brain is no longer considered much of a brain. “I gave Rove $500,000. What did I get for it? Nothing!” Langone told me. Two of Rove’s most generous 2012 funders, Texas billionaires Bob Perry and Harold Simmons, have since passed away, and their heirs have turned off the cash spigot. “Everyone is still shocked Romney lost,” says Simmons’s widow, Annette. “I haven’t committed at all.” So far this year, Crossroads has raised just $784,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Rove insists he’s still a player. “We’ll be involved in the Senate races,” he told me. “Depending on who the presidential nominee is, we may be involved in that, but that’s a long way off.” What Rove is not is anywhere near the center of the Republican Party. “But for his perch on Fox News, Karl would be in political Siberia,” says a top Republican strategist. “The going joke is that he must have a picture of Roger Ailes in his underwear to keep his contract.”
It’s not just that Rove is personally marginalized. Donors have awakened to the realization that topflight consultants can earn millions from campaigns regardless of whether they win. “It bothers a lot of people that politics has become a cottage industry. Everyone is taking a piece of this and a slice of that,” says California winemaker John Jordan, a former Rove donor. “Crossroads treated me like a child with these investor conference calls where they wouldn’t tell you what was really going on. They offered platitudes and a newsletter.”
Working under the assumption that they can support a campaign better themselves, donors are building their own organizations, staffed by operatives who report to them…
If you read the whole thing, you’ll see that (so far, at least) these billionaires are learning what billionaires usually learn whenever they step outside their own narrow fiefdoms: Winning always looks easier in retrospect, when you don’t see the frantic marathons, the near-misses, the many times competitors came thisclose to taking the medalist down. Who knew that a band of professional grifters calling themselves “campaign operatives” would be well-positioned to take advantage of every half-bright moneybag who strolled into their office with a grievance and a checkbook?….
Baud
“Who do they think they are? Us?” those donors asked.
Patricia Kayden
Poor little Billionaires. So sad that they have to work so hard just to buy elections.
JGabriel
TPM:
“It’s not fair,” Jordan continued. “”It’s almost like politicians of the party of business have become just as corrupt, crooked, and greedy as the business-people of the businesses that buy them off. Who could have expected that?” Jordan whimpered.
redshirt
Amen, AL. And thank you for doing your part, and more.
Jeffro
The legislation that comes from these billionaires’ disenchantment should be interesting: “truth in bribing” laws?
Heck, they usually get what they want for so cheaply, this really seems like small-claims court material to me.
? Martin
Boy, our meritocracy is a bitch, isn’t it?
MattF
Interesting NYT article about those gosh-darned rich people and their M-O-N-E-Y. “Rules are for the little people.”
SiubhanDuinne
Tells me absofuckinglutely everything I need to know about these people.
lamh36
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne: Don’t it though?
lamh36
@FOX29philly 6h6 hours ago
Baltimore braces as first trial in Freddie Gray death closes
Gex
With the demise of the labor union, our billionaire overlords have benefited greatly in pitting us all against each other.
I, for one, am enjoying watching their class solidarity disintegrate as they can’t agree upon how, exactly, to buy an election.
? Martin
@MattF: I think people misunderstand how people view ‘rules’. Rules carry a cost to follow, and everyone simply manages that cost like anything else. Even poor people do it when deciding whether to break the speed limit or not – it’s just that poor people can’t really afford to break many rules. But what’s the cost of violating a building permit or campaign finance laws? $10K? $250K? Okay, but if it’s a $100M house or a $100M campaign, that’s less than one percent. That’s less than you’ve probably budgeted to be embezzled from your operation. After all, if government wanted the rule to be followed, they’d put a more appropriate penalty against breaking it.
oldgold
Generally speaking, this has been known for a long time. Dr. John Bridges in 1587 in the Defence of the Government of the Church of Engalnd</em,observed:
"If they pay a penie or two pence more for the reddinesse of them..let them looke to that, a foole and his money is soone parted."
Gex
Oh, and the only thing stupider than thinking they can give political operatives money and guarantee a win is getting rid of the people who might actually know a little bit about the process, doing it themselves, and expecting a win. Jesus, the egos on these assholes.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Really. I mean, I assume when she “says” that, she says it in December 2015. She and her friends must live in a perpetual state of shockedness.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@? Martin: Not so much rules as they are guidelines, or perhaps suggestions.
Debbie
Rove’s plenty busy flogging his book on McKinley. From what I’ve heard him say about it, it seems pretty dull.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne: I mean, it wasn’t even an upset. Obama was predicted to win by most if not all legitimate pollsters.
RSA
@? Martin:
Like in Finland:
Gin & Tonic
@RSA: Different approach in Ontario, where the first time I saw a sign to this effect on the QEW around Hamilton, I think, I was shocked. 50km/h over the limit means a $10,000 fine and on-the-spot impoundment of your vehicle.
ms_canadada
@Gin & Tonic: I live in Hamilton. Are you a Canuck?
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Zackly.
ThresherK
@efgoldman: But even the worst owners can barely ruin their own teams’ value while losing tons of games. I guess it goes back to whether these folks want to make policy, make money, or win elections. In the NBA, analagously, Donald Sterling made his choice.
An offshoot of Sterling’s handiwork: His fellow owners’ franchises’ values were not hurt by his lack of effort and spending in fielding non-competitive teams.
RSA
@Gin & Tonic: Wow.
? Martin
@RSA: That’s one way. Another way is to take something more valuable than money – throw them in jail, or otherwise restrict their rights in other ways – ban them from activities, etc.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Baud: Exactly what I don’t get about their “shockedness”. I was baffled by that response in 2012, and still am. It only confirms what I’ve maintained for years – getting rich and staying rich takes a special kind of stupidity.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@? Martin: Oh, I like that. How about that AND the Finnish money penalty?
eyelessgame
Their “shockedness” actually scared me a lot, and still does. It means they were, and are, really in the bubble. They don’t pay attention to mainstream information – they’re only hearing their flappers. If they ever win the presidency again, the whole White House will operate from within the bubble. That could honestly kill us all.
benw
@eyelessgame: it’s not just that they ignore mainstream information, but they don’t really believe in information at all. To them, information is just the shit you have to say to bend others to your will. They firmly believe that climate scientists – to pick one example – are also just saying anything at all to “win” their debate. The “information” is meaningless. The only goal is to win.
There’s a special amount of not just racism but classism in their “shockedness”. I believe they accepted Obama’s 2008 election because it was clear that Bush and Republicans were so hated that any D was going to win. It didn’t have anything to do with the individual candidates. So they went scorched earth on Obama, but it wasn’t exactly personal (except to the real mouth breathing racists), he was just a Dem. But 2012 was supposed to be on the merits: when the pointy-headed, community organizing Negro was beaten by the superiority of the rich high-class white dude. To them, it was so obvious that Romney would win it was like breathing. And the polls were just more “information”, to be used only if it helped them win. So they really did believe the legitimate poll aggregators were Dem tools, because “information” is just a partisan tool.
I don’t think we have to imagine very hard to picture a bubble Republican presidency. W’s admin was barely tethered to reality. Maybe that’s better than the current candidates’ total lunacy (Hi, Dr Carson!), but remembering the lies leading up to the Iraq War and the inept response to Katrina, for examples, it’s pretty easy to see that they believed that “information” was just another lie to tell.
Mathguy
Note to self: do not buy Jordan wine anymore, since profits go to RWNJ.
Another Holocene Human
@Gex: Agreed. Grifters, sure. But they don’t even have a clue why they lost.
Chris
@eyelessgame:
What helps the bubble effect, I think, is that rich Republicans very firmly believe that they’re smarter and better than everyone else – and that the proof of that is in their income. “So, fine, I get it wrong sometimes. We all do. But who am I supposed to listen to? The Little People? Ridiculous. They don’t know better than me. If they did, they’d be as rich as me, or richer.” They live in their bubble because they can’t conceive of anyone outside of it having anything of value to say. Even after as big a dope-slap as the 2012 election.
Chris
@benw:
And the terrifying thing about that to me is that in that administration, W himself was still more connected to reality than the neocon “experts” he relied on. Cheney was all set to have a third war with Iran – Bush was the onewith enough common sense to say no. Rumsfeld was the one who came up with all the “no plans, please. We’ll be out in a month,” and things didn’t get better till he was fired.
So yeah, Carson and the others are genuinely scary. But what’s even scarier is that the insiders, the ones who’re supposed to be experts in their subject matter and that the Republican president would have to rely on, are even more firmly buried im their own bubble. Republican expertise is well and truly dead.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: Part of the problem is that they can usually win midterm elections–and not in squeakers either, but in huge roaring landslides that get portrayed as world-changing political revolutions. That’s a huge positive reinforcement that tells them Americans love them and they’re doing everything right. Well, they do and they are–as long as we’re talking about the whiter, older midterm electorate. These are mostly the same people who delivered Reagan and Bush the landslides of the 1980s, and they still turn out.
Sad_Dem
What about the rumor that Anonymous counterhacked the GOP in Ohio? Anyone hear that?
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
They wanted unlimited money in politics. So what did they expect? People wouldn’t show up to bilk them out of unlimited sums of money? If they don’t want to throw unlimited sums of money away on losing causes they could always support campaign finance reform. That way they’d be protected from their own future stupidity.
J R in WV
Evil lurks among us today and tomorrow. These rich people are so detached from reality that “deranged” fits most of them perfectly.
imonlylurking
I love this article so much. Especially the bit about the guy who went to the SEC for some kind of enforcement mechanism against Karl Rove and discovered that politics is not in their purview.