Posted on 02/21/2015 4:11:18 AM PST by Kaslin
Earlier this week, my website Right Wing News put out a report called 50 Million Down The Tubes: How 17 Conservative PACs Are Spending Their Money. That report was based on 170 pages of research I had commissioned into how conservative PACs are spending their money and the numbers of the 10 groups on the bottom were so bad that I was genuinely shocked, which doesn’t happen very often.
Just in case you’re wondering, those bottom 10 PACs you’re looking at spent $54,318,498, but only $3,621,896 of that money went to candidates via direct contributions or independent expenditures on their behalf.
Some people have asked why we even looked into this, especially since some of these groups are generally well thought of conservative groups that endorse great grassroots candidates.
There’s a simple answer to that question. When 54 million dollars is pouring into PACs that are cumulatively eating up 93% of it in overhead, fundraising and salaries, it has a tremendous negative impact on the conservative movement.
Just look at some of the key races Republicans lost by a hair during the last election cycle.
Republican Ken Cuccinelli was defeated by Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia governor's race by 2.4 points. Even though Cuccinelli was a conservative grassroots favorite, McAuliffe was still able to outspend him by 16 million dollars. How much would the money that was wasted on those bottom 10 PACs have helped in that race?
Bob Beauprez came up 3 points short in his attempt to knock off the loathsome John Hickenlooper in the Colorado governor's race. The Republican Governor’s Association was outgunned by its Democrat counterparts to the tune of $600,000 and Beauprez was outspent by 2.6 million dollars. Getting a Republican at the top of the ticket in a potential swing state like Colorado going into 2016 is no small matter and a few million dollars might have swung the race.
Republican Ed Gillespie lost to Mark Warner in the Virginia Senate race by 1 point. To pull off that victory, Warner’s campaign outspent Gillespie by 9 million dollars. Maybe even a couple of million dollars more might have been all it took to get Gillespie over the hump. In 2016, the Republicans must play defense in the Senate and that lone seat might be the difference between keeping or losing the chamber.
The same could be said of Republican Scott Brown’s race against Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire. Shaheen only beat Brown by 4 points. However, in the money race, Shaheen beat Brown by 7 million dollars. Given that Brown is about as good as you’re going to get in New Hampshire and that holding this seat could be the difference between getting rid of Obamacare or being stuck with it if we elect a Republican President in 2016, a few million more in this race could have been a game changer.
Conservative grassroots favorite Dan Bongino lost a 2 point House race against Democrat John Delaney. In a race where less than 4.1 million dollars was raised by both candidates, Bongino was outspent by a little over a million dollars. If more cash had gone into that race, we could have an outspoken former Secret Service Agent in the House instead of yet another liberal Democrat.
Key battles where we could have used more funding to get these candidates over the hump are EXACTLY the sort of races that PACs are normally expected to step into. Unfortunately, as you can see from that chart above, there are a lot of conservative PACs that have become money sponges that absorb vast amounts of cash without making much of an impact. Sure they may do some limited amount of good by endorsing candidates, but there are radio hosts and websites that fill that purpose just as well. The reason there are hardworking people digging deeply into their thinning wallets to give contributions to these groups is because they want them to have the resources to help elect candidates who can get this country back on track. PACs aren’t supposed to be job programs for activists, consultant enrichment services or handy vehicles to funnel money to vendors owned by friends, family members and surrogates. To the contrary, conservative PACs should be spending most of their money to get conservative candidates elected and there are a number of PACs that are raking in the bucks without doing much of that.
If a PAC isn’t spending a lot of money to get candidates elected, it doesn’t mean the activists who work there are crooks or bad people. However, it does mean they’re ineffective as an organization and they’re soaking up resources that are desperately needed elsewhere if we’re going to turn this country around. Just as America can’t afford to have any more of our money wasted by the government, the conservative movement can’t afford to continue pouring 50 million dollars per election cycle into PACs that are frittering it away.
They’re trying to throw SarahPAC into the cauldron of scandal I see. That’s one PAC that has paid off handsomely for Conservatives because it has kept Palin in the game financially despite all the ferocious lib attacks against her. Without Palin and SarahPAC, there would be NO Ted Cruz, NO Mike Lee, and precious few other TEA Party Conservatives in Congress right now.
One of the problems is the constant telephone calls asking for money. It makes the Tea Party look bad.
One of the problems is the constant telephone calls asking for money. It makes the Tea Party look bad.
Then why is it just at 7% expenditures directly or in support of candidates?
I read up on TPP here in Georgia. I wouldn’t give them the time of day, let alone any money.
One of the first to capitalize on this was Free Republic. Back in the early days there were those who tried to take over Free Republic(like CAL). Others started up websites to compete with FR, like Trixie(LuciAnne)
A good model to follow is start up a website, get the traffic up, and sell it to Salem Communications. Which is what Townhall.com did. Michele Maulkin started up both Hot Air and Twitchy, then sold them to Salem.
The rest is used as travel funds for her campaign appearances. It’s extremely expensive traveling from Alaska to the lower 48 and back, repeatedly.
Well, I’m not going to condemn her. I’ll let her determine what the impact is in being lumped together with some of these other organizations who have absolutely no defense for the numbers that were determined. One here in Georgia, in particular.
Not an expert on the purpose of PACs, but direct contributions to candidates might not be the most beneficial function of every PAC. Some review of what these PACs say they do, or will do when they ask for contributions might make this situation look better, or even worse.
However, rallying citizens (a little “community organizing,” here), sending key people to many events across the country (SarahPAC), paying the credit cards charges on pass-through donations (Senate Conservative Fund), creating authoritative “think-tank” reports, paying for travel expenses for key bloggers and website hosts (Tea Party Patriots for Jim Robinson (if memory correctly holds)), and other similar activities are not ever going to show up as money specifically provided to candidates on the table above.
So I can be okay with the apparent “poor spending” habits because they do not accurately reflect the reality of the monies spent.
Without the NeoCons, there would be no Sarah Palin. In her early days, the only media that covered her was the Alaska media and the Texas Oil and Gas media which covered her mainly negatively.
The NeoCons discovered her and brought her onto the natl stage, and got her the VP nomination. And NeoCon Randy Schunemann became her main advisor. Kim Daniels from Thomas Moore also became an advisor. Then NeoCon Michael Goldfarb was added.
Then the NeoCons set out to co-opt the Tea Party and utilized her to turn the social conservative tea partiers and Glenn Beck to turn libertarian minded tea partiers into reliable GOP voters. Palin's entrance was at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville and Beck would have his shindig on the National Mall. Palin would attend Beck's event to unite the two groups.
Palin and Beck were so successful at this they both figured out they could co-opt the Tea Party for financial gain. Beck was more successful at this than Palin, but she did well. As her donations fell she emulated Beck's money machine model and started up the Sarah Channel.
Palin got sideways with the NeoCons over her political endorsements, especially Sharon Angle and Christine O'Donnell.
Then in 2011 she fired her two NeoCon advisers(Schuenemann and Goldfarb) because the NeoCons had been very influential in getting Obama to intervene in Libya and Palin was opposed to intervening there.
The NeoCons took off the gloves and went after her, which ended her political career.
Complete and utter liberal bullcrap!!!
I respectfully suggest you have no idea what a NeoCon is.
It was a term invented by liberals to shame Jewish Americans to keep them from voting to support GWB.
Long before Beck or Palin were even on the radar screen.
This is why one should give primarily to candidates OR proven organizations like Heritage or Susan B Anthony, etc.
Since there is no such thing as the Tea Party, anyone can call and ask for money on their behalf. Anyone can start a website claiming to be the Tea Party. Anyone can run for office as a Tea Party candidate. We are the Tea Party and none of us every filled out a membership application.
Republican Ed Gillespie lost to Mark Warner in the Virginia Senate race by 1 point.
Gillespie lost because he was a cheap labor importer.
His campaign refused to use Warner’s amnesty votes against him.
Because they agreed with him.
Most of the cash washing through the political system is provided by The Cheap Labor Express to manipulate the process so we cannot elect those who would stop the invasion of our nation.
Right on target...so to speak.
It begins with a group of liberal Jewish hawks who left the democrat party to join the GOP because of the anti-war movement in the dem party.
The term neoconservatives was coined by the democrats and used as a term of ridicule that these liberals could become conservatives. But Irving Kristol(father of Bill Kristol), who was the leader of the group, wore the name neoconservative as a badge.
So, for many years NeoCons were Jews. But that begin to change in the transition to the post cold war period and the Wolfowitz Doctrine and the creation of the Project for a New American Century. So today a NeoCon can be Jewish, Christian, Muslim, etc. It just means hawk.
As a foreign policy doctrine it emphasizes idealism, humanitarianism, nation building, and spreading democracy. Also unilateralism. NeoCons think multi-lateralism is weakness and "leading from behind".
The problem for the NeoCons in the modern GOP is that "true conservatives" see NeoCons as big government conservatives and social liberals who support abortion rights, homosexual marriage, and amnesty.
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