Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

It’s a doggy dog world.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

You are here: Home / 2024 Elections / 2024 Primaries / Repub Primaries Open Thread: Money, Money, Money, Money

Repub Primaries Open Thread: Money, Money, Money, Money

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Or then again…


 
But wait! Governor DeSaster has a bold new strategy!!!…

Count on the FTFNYTimes to frantically fluff the establishment ‘contender’ — “DeSantis’s Striking, Risky Strategy: Not Trying to Trick Small Donors”:

… No phony deadlines, Mr. DeSantis has promised donors. No wildly implausible pledges that sizable contributions will be matched by committees affiliated with the campaign. And no tricking donors into recurring donations.

This strategy is one of the subtle ways Mr. DeSantis’s team is trying to contrast him with Mr. Trump, who has often cajoled, guilt-tripped and occasionally misled small donors. Although his campaign has not directly called out Mr. Trump’s methods, on the day Mr. DeSantis declared he would run for president, his website prominently vowed to eschew “smoke and mirrors,” “fake matches” and “lies” in its fund-raising…

So far, it’s difficult to tell if Mr. DeSantis’s approach is working. His fund-raising slowed after his campaign began in late May, and campaign officials did not provide figures that would have shed light on its success with small donors.

The battle to raise money from average Americans may seem quaint in the era of billionaires and super PACs, which have taken on outsize roles in U.S. elections. But straight campaign cash is still, in many ways, the lifeblood of a campaign, and a powerful measure of the strength of a candidate. For example, G.O.P. presidential contenders must reach a threshold of individual donors set by the Republican National Committee to qualify for the debate stage, a bar that is already causing some candidates to engage in gimmicky contortions…

Mr. DeSantis’s advisers argue that being more transparent with donors could be a long-term way for Republicans to counter the clear advantage Democrats have built up in internet fund-raising, largely thanks to their online platform ActBlue, founded in 2004. A Republican alternative, WinRed, didn’t get off the ground until 15 years later. A greater share of Democrats than Republicans said they had donated to a political campaign in the last two years, according to a recent NBC News poll, meaning the G.O.P. has a less robust pool of donors to draw from…

(Took the RNC 15 years to grok the concepts of ‘ethical’ and ‘cooperative’, and their potential donors are still having some problems doing so.)

… The campaign did not respond to a question about how many small donors had contributed so far. It had set a goal of recruiting 100,000 donors by July 1, but as of late June, the wall had only about 50,000 names, according to a fund-raising email.

And although Mr. DeSantis’s team has pledged to act transparently when it comes to small donors, senior aides in the governor’s office have faced accusations that they inappropriately pressured lobbyists into donating to his campaign…

Baby steps, people!

Reader Interactions

44Comments

  2. 2.

    Kay

    We need them all on the stage

    Bloody, protracted and messy is our goal

    LOTTA hurt feelings and grudges at the end

  3. 3.

    Kay

    I might watch just to see weird anti social DeSantis

    i hope he does the laugh where he opens his mouth wide but his eyes stay dead!

  4. 4.

    JWR

    I saw a bit of Chuck Todd’s interview of ND governor Buford, (or whatever his name is), and boy, is that one weird dude. First, he says he’s not the culture warrior type, then immediately starts in with the culture warrior BS. He said he supported the Infrastructure bill, but wished it wasn’t piled so high with “ideology”. (“You have to have unions, you have to hire x number and type of people”, and etc.) Just weird.

    Plus he looks a lot like Bert from Bert & Ernie, and the upper half of his face looks frozen. It just don’t move.

  6. 6.

    SpaceUnit

    I had to google Doug Burgam.  I take it this bozo is running a delusional campaign for the Repub nomination?

  8. 8.

    Mai Naem mobileI

    How can this be legal?  Even the lotteries to meet the candidate are more careful.

  11. 11.

    Brachiator

    @Kay:

    I might watch just to see weird anti social DeSantis.

    I am torn. I can’t stand either Trump or DeSantis, but I think that if he comes across as super creepy, he may collapse his campaign all by himself.

    All GOP candidates should be asked if they are prepared to steal the election,  if they believe that they can declassify documents by thinking it, and if they believe the president is above the law.

    They also should be asked how they will handle the next pandemic and how many deaths are acceptable.

  12. 12.

    Suzanne

    Promising $20 gift cards for everyone who gives $1.

    Could I donate $50 and get $1000?

  14. 14.

    SpaceUnit

    I’m really looking forward to that first debate.  It’s gonna be all kinds of looney tunes.  I should probably stock up on grain alcohol and LSD just to make it more fun.

  15. 15.

    Mai Naem mobileI

    @JWR: he does look like Bert which might end up being one of  his biggest liabilities. They had a long interview with Burgum on Sirius. I didn’t listen to the whole thing but  with what I did hear he sounded like he was where he needed to be.   He’s a dark horse candidate and I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up as a Veep or main candidate if TFG ends up imploding. I can see the true non-trumper GOPrs  and the midwest/rocky mtn/plains states ‘will vote for TFG but would rather vote for somebody else’ coalescing around this guy.

  17. 17.

    HumboldtBlue

    @JWR:

    I just ran across this link at Buzzfeed (yes it’s still a real thing, Buzzfeed) about how Europeans conceptualize, imagine, picture, we Americans.

    Some of them are spot on.

    My beloved jewel, Delaware, is viewed… fondly if nostalgically.

    Connecticut is fucking perfect.

    Oregon is nailed.

  18. 18.

    Ken

    @Alison Rose: It’s a thousand times more generous than the usual Republican programs.

    No, I take that back; they don’t give two cents for anyone in need.

  21. 21.

    Mai Naem mobileI

    @Alison Rose: its just a means to an end. He wants his 50000 small $$ donations so that he can get on that debate stage. Don’t forget Dubbya framed $100 checks   as economic relief as well when he was giving high earners big $$$ tax cuts.

  22. 22.

    randy khan

    I seem to recall that Trump has said he will pass on the first debate.  And it kind of makes sense – being on stage among the obvious also-rans with Trump nowhere to be seen probably would not be a good look for DeSantis.

  23. 23.

    Alison Rose

    @Mai Naem mobileI: Oh, I know he’s full of shit. It’s just…I mean, at least $100 could maybe pay someone’s utility or cable bill for a month. The fuck is $20 gonna do? And actually, $19 since you have to send in the buck to get it.

  28. 28.

    Maxim

    @HumboldtBlue: Those are funny, but also AI apparently thinks that the US (with the possible exception of California) is populated solely by white people.

  29. 29.

    Martin

    @Maxim: Yeah, I noted that as well.

    Not many states have good stereotypes, apparently. Nailed California, though. We all look like that.

    I thought Alaska comes off particularly well and Vermont particularly harshly. Utah, well, that’s kind of the vibes they put off, at least.

  30. 30.

    BellyCat

    @HumboldtBlue: Amazing and hilarious! Worth a click, for sure.

    The best part is that these images were generated by AI when queried. Broadly held stereotypes no longer need be limited to the imagination, courtesy of our new computational (and apparently 100% Caucasian) overlords.

    (As a side note, the images are so good that it’s easy to see why illustrators are in a panic about AI image generation.)

  31. 31.

    Chris T.

    @Martin: Maryland (where I grew up) seems pretty accurate.

    I know a guy in NC who looks exactly like that picture too.

    I’m in WA now and that one’s a bit off, but not completely wrong…

  33. 33.

    lowtechcyclist

    @HumboldtBlue: The guy in the Maryland pic is one of the few I wouldn’t run away from on sight, so there’s that.

    They got the Montana pic wrong: it’s supposed to be a pygmy pony, and where’s the crop of dental floss? ;-)

  35. 35.

    JML

    @The Thin Black Duke: In an effort to avoid being called racist (since they obviously intended to make fun of people from every state) they ended up being differently racist.

    And how in the hell did they not make the image for FL or AZ old? Of course they think both states are filled with old people waiting to die.

  36. 36.

    Karen S.

    @HumboldtBlue: Utah and Indiana are some children of the corn horror. Is that West Virginia old dude going to dance with the pig or wrestle (rassle) it?

  37. 37.

    Kay

    So great it’s all coming out. There will be real momentum for anti corruption reforms in the legal system:

    Several lawyers who have had business before the supreme court, including one who successfully argued to end race-conscious admissions at universities, paid money to a top aide to Justice Clarence Thomas, according to the aide’s Venmo transactions. The payments appear to have been made in connection to Thomas’s 2019 Christmas party.
    The payments to Rajan Vasisht, who served as Thomas’s aide from July 2019 to July 2021, seem to underscore the close ties between Thomas, who is embroiled in ethics scandals following a series of revelations about his relationship with a wealthy billionaire donor, and certain senior Washington lawyers who argue cases and have other business in front of the justice.
    Vasisht’s Venmo account – which was public prior to requesting comment for this article and is no longer – show that he received seven payments in November and December 2019 from lawyers who previously served as Thomas legal clerks. The amount of the payments is not disclosed, but the purpose of each payment is listed as either “Christmas party”, “Thomas Christmas Party”, “CT Christmas Party” or “CT Xmas party”, in an apparent reference to the justice’s initials.
    The lawyers who made the Venmo transactions were: Patrick Strawbridge, a partner at Consovoy McCarthy who recently successfully argued that affirmative action violated the US constitution; Kate Todd, who served as White House deputy counsel under Donald Trump at the time of the payment and is now a managing party of Ellis George Cipollone’s law office; Elbert Lin, the former solicitor general of West Virginia who played a key role in a supreme court case that limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions; and Brian Schmalzbach, a partner at McGuire Woods who has argued multiple cases before the supreme court.
    Other lawyers who made payments include Manuel Valle, a graduate of Hillsdale College and the University of Chicago Law School who clerked for Thomas last year and is currently working as a managing associate at Sidley, and Liam Hardy, who was working at the Department of Justice’s office of legal counsel at the time the payment was made and now serves as a appeals court judge for the armed forces.

  38. 38.

    Kay

    Great- He has an army of ass-kissing, clout-seeking, ethics impaired far Right wingers embedded all through government:

    Thomas is known for having close relationships with his former clerks. A 2019 article in the Atlantic noted that the rightwing justice has a “vast network” of former clerks and mentees who are now serving as federal judges and served in senior positions throughout the Trump administration. The large presence of former Thomas clerks, the Atlantic noted, meant that the “notoriously silent justice may end up with an outsize voice in the legal system for years to come”.

  39. 39.

    Another Scott

    @Kay: Eh?  A SCOTUS justice gets 4-5 clerks a year.  Too lazy to count, but it’s on the order of 150 people for Thomas.

    Over 32 years.

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  40. 40.

    Kay

    @Another Scott:

    Thanks, but this:

    and mentees

    Ginni Thomas maintains the relationships- she handles the list. It came out during her (most recent) scandal where she was promoting overthrowing the elected government that she was urging Thomas’ clerks and mentees to join the effort.

  41. 41.

    Another Scott

    @Kay: Ok, but I think the point stands.

    Yes, Thomas and the other RWNJs have lots of friends in high places.  But the federal government is huge, and lots of other people – good people – have friends in high places too.

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  43. 43.

    Birdie

    @Another Scott: I don’t know. The rules for regular low-level government employees about cash transactions, gifts and fraternizing seem a lot stricter than the standards these “high places” folks set themselves. Everyone might do it, it’s still hypocritical.

  44. 44.

    Another Scott

    @Birdie: Sorry I wasn’t clear.

    Yes, the SCOTUS should obey all the rules that normal federal employees, and other federal judges, have to obey – and more.

    I was intending to only address the stuff Kay quoted about Thomas having a “vast” network of munchkins.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

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