Campaigns, Cost and Cupidity
Campaigns cost a great deal of money. The reason, of course, is television time and
access to modern day technology.
Personally, I would love to have all television advertising for
political causes, people and votes made illegal. The populous would have to learn about issues
the old fashioned way, by reading and listening to candidates and their
surrogates speak in forums. I would, of
course, let television give time to candidates for
debate and stump speaking—heck how many repeats of crime dramas and sitcoms do
we need to see? But that isn’t going to
happen; so campaigns cost a great deal of money.
As a
result, politicians have to raise money.
In May of last year, President Obama was in Austin , Texas
for a rare visit and some serious purse jingling. His pattern was predictable. He held a much touted college campus event
where the poor students got in for a mere $44, while faculty and the common man
paid up to $1000. This allowed him to
point to these fairly low-level donors as an example of his,
“man-of-the-people” style. But
wait! Then he went to a very low key,
very private dinner for the real rain makers of the Democratic and liberal
leaning left where tickets for individuals went for $35,000 per person and
couples at $50,000. Since Democrats like
money and moneyed donors, but want to point to Republicans as the party of the
rich and privileged, they don’t say much about this kind of soiree. They are abetted in this charade by the media
that are happy to advertise the cost of every Romney big-ticket event, but
politely ignore the same information about Obama.
This Obama
combination of low-cost public and high-end private funding is a predictable
pattern. For example on June 4th
of there was the obligatory small potatoes fund raiser on Broadway, followed
two days later by the real money maker, a $25,000/couple gala followed by a
$40,000/couple dinner.
The same
search for Romney shows a pattern of fund raising events with $2500 to $10,000
events, with the, “hosts” contributing any where from $25,000 to $75,000. The point is, I’ve got no problem with either
party raising the money they need, as long as it is a voluntary gift and not
coerced through union membership or hidden political action committees. It is our money, we earned it; we should be
able to spend it as we wish (now there is a novel thought!). Money is the lubricant of choice for
politics. So be it.
What I do take exception to is news
outlets, like MSNBC this morning, making a snarky and calculated reference to
Romney attending a $2500/plate dinner while not making a single reference to
Obama’s speaking engagement two days earlier that started at a (typically)
$500/couple cocktail party and then ended at a $35,800/per person dinner at the
home of a movie producer. This cupidity
(in this case, an obsessive desire for liberal politicians—not money) on the
part of the press is so obvious it is almost counter-productive. Typical phrases talk about Obama, “…closing
the fund raising gap…” while Romney, “…attends a fat-cat dinner…” Only people who choose to be blind could fail
to notice the double standard.
It is also
pervasive in the Democratic Party itself.
Just look at the recently released Obama ad that features a man who
blames Romney for his poor wife’s death to cancer because he lost his job and
thus his health insurance. It fails to
mention that his wife had her own health insurance through her job. In this case, the, “lying by omission” borders
on disgusting.
Examine the
details and keep the faith.
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