At least republicans are consistant in their financial management style, where they borrow and spend and then hope that the Saudis will bail them out, the part about the Saudis bailing them out comes from when George Bush was a CEO.
A crucial GOP fundraising committee is nearly broke, according to its latest monthly filing with the Federal Election Committee last week.
The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) reported $1.6 million in cash on hand and $4 million in debts as of Aug. 31. The group helps bankroll House campaigns for GOP candidates.Its counterpart, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, reported $22.1 million, more than 10 times its Republican counterpart.
on a more serious note this lack of fund raising may also show that the traditional GOP supporter, corporate America, does not have faith that the republicans will be able to deliver key legislation any more. One example might be the failure of the various amnesty bills, corporate America wanted a new source of low paid legal workers and Bush and his pals were unable to deliver it for them, without losing a large part of the GOP base.
The other side of this is that a lot of the money seems to be flowing the way of the Democrats, the challenge for the Democrats is to keep all the corporate money from making them into a pantsuit wearing version of the GOP, where corprate interests are placed ahead of indaviduals at all times.
The entire article can be viewed here
I think part of it is that the writing is on the wall, and the other part of it is that the economic outlook is poor.
Supply-side economic theory has always insisted, and always been wrong about this: “Tax cuts will equal higher revenues over time”
Somebody made that up and millions just took it as a matter of faith. Well, it turns out that it hasn’t worked this time, just like it didn’t under Reagan, and the US dollar is on par with the Canadian dollar.
Corporate taxes getting cut year after year won’t make CEO’s into blind zombies. Most of these corporate tax cuts don’t make a difference to anything but stock prices. CEO’s don’t innovate BECAUSE of a tax cut, and anyone that does is an idiot, shouldn’t be in the job to begin with.
Republicans have bankrupted this nation, and that is bad for everyone…EVERYONE. Alan Greenspan and other supply-siders who bought and sold this garbage over the years about the bullshit economic policies of Republicans, are all suspect. All we have now is the MAD MONEY, the Cramer-types, waxing on the blinking numbers on computer screens, what they’re REALLY saying…shit, a depressed dollar? HERE ARE THE STOCKS YOU SHOULD GET INTO TO EXPLOIT THE DOLLAR’S WEAKNESS…
And the Senate is a big steaming pile of dogshit. Cowards piled upon cowards, deficating on one another, eating it, feeding it to their “good friends”.
I’m not feeling this whole ‘democracy’ thing this week. What we’re seeing now is an historic groupthink inspired crumble. The old theories that put us here need to be called out for what they are. These Democratic candidates need to stop fucking around and actually say something. I’d me more inspired after watching the Teletubbies than I would last night’s debate. Lieberman-Kyl, the Iran ammendment, passed with pretty much the same numbers as the ammendment on the MoveOn ad…Durbin comes out against the ammendment 12 hours before he votes for it.
Way to go…can’t get a vote on Webb’s ammendment, but by all means, let’s move forward with this Iran War ammendment, indeed…
GOP fundraising is WAAYYY behind Dems this year. Part of that is due to the Thompson lateness, coming out “late”, along with Rudy (dirtyness), and Mitt (mormoness).
I posted on this discrepancy back in July:
http://caveatbettor.blogspot.com/2007/07/little-skepticism-on-huge-fundraising.html
Hillary can raise a lot of money, as can Barack. But once Hillary is the nominee, there will be some backlash donating to the GOP, given her polarization of the electorate. But it could be too little, too late. I think cleaning the Bush dust out is a healthy thing, although there some Clinton dust in the State Dept that remains, too.
In any case, the GOP didn’t have to steal money from the Boys and Girls Club to stay solvent, unlike Air America.
Actually, the GOP (Bush) made a presentation in 2001 or 2002 on increased funding for the Boys and Girls club, and then cut funding for it 5 years in a row.
It’s the ideology caveat, the supply-side ideology…that’s the “dust” that needs to get cleaned out. We have to ballance the budget, raise taxes, pay down the debt, restore the dollar, raise wages, protect our market and start building the middle class back up.
Reagan and Bush Jr. proved over 16 years combined that tax cuts do not raise tax revenues, and the impact on the market is only that the wealthy reinvest and increase their nest egg.
I agree that the balanced budget is a good aspiration. But raising taxes as ideological as supply-sidism. Cutting spending might be a better way to go, in terms of reducing poverty.
Wages, markets, and the middle class all get boosts from lower taxes. That is just plain math (well, okay, some if it requires some economics background).
Peggy Noonan on fire today:
You get the impression Mr. Obama trusts himself to think, as if something good might happen if he does. What a concept. Anyway, I’ve started to lean forward a little when he talks.
But he doesn’t stand a chance, right? His main competitor, Mrs. Clinton, is this week’s invincible. She broke through 50% for the first time in a big national poll–53% saying they would support her, a full 33 points more than Obama. Her third quarter fund raising beat everyone else’s. “It’s all over but the voting,” said Rep. Tom Petri, who will probably get pummeled a bit by the campaign for premature triumphalism. But he only said what a lot of people are starting to think.
Has the Democratic Party noticed it actually has some impressive candidates? They should not be written off, and when you think about it, it’s weird that they’re being written off. Joe Biden used to seem mildly giddy, vain but in a small way, not a big and interesting way. (Big is LBJ: Ah will impose mah will. Small: Where’s my hair-sculpting gel?) But it has been 35 years since he became a figure in Washington, and in the past few years in particular he has been ahead of his peers on Iraq–ahead with warnings, ahead with tripartite thinking, ahead with a seriousness and sobriety about the fix we’re in. He is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and he’s been reading daily threat reports for a long time. He is impressive. Why don’t the Democrats notice?
Chris Dodd is the head of the Senate Banking Committee, and nothing if not sophisticated. In the post-9/11 world, sophisticated is not so bad. He’s been in the Senate 27 years. In earlier years his thinking on government, his assumptions about what can and should be expected of it, veered from the utopian to the world-weary, and were sometimes both at once. But if you listen to him and watch him in debate, you might legitimately conclude this is a candidate who understands how it all works and what time it is. He’s one of the grown-ups.
It is the nature of modern politics. A political family gains allies–retainers, supporters, hangers-on, admirers, associates, in-house Machiavellis. The bigger the government, the more ways allies can be awarded, which binds them more closely. Your destiny is theirs. Members of the court recruit others. Money lines spread person to person, company to company, board to board, mover to mover.
The most important part is the money lines. Power is expensive. The second most important part is the word “winner.” The Bushes are winners; the Clintons are winners. We know this, they’ve won. The Bushes are wired into the Republican money-line system; the Clintons are wired into the Democratic money-line system. For a generation, two generations now, they have had the same dynamics in play, only their friends are on the blue team, not the red, or the red, not the blue.
They are, both groups, up and ready and good to go every election cycle. They are machines. There are good people on each side, idealists, the hopeful, those convinced the triumph of their views will make our country better. And there are those on each side who are not so wonderful, not so well-meaning, not well-meaning at all. And some are idiots, but very comfortable ones.
Is this good for our democracy, this air of inevitability? Is it good in terms of how the world sees us, and how we see ourselves? Or is it something we want to break out of, like a trance?
It would be understandable if they were families of a most extraordinary natural distinction and self-sacrifice. But these are not the Adamses of Massachusetts we’re talking about. You’ve noticed, right?
Hillary is one primary loss away from being a 2008 version of Howard Dean, Obama might be a better candidate in the general election, I do hope that who ever wins the Democratic nomination keeps looking at health care and makes it a serious issue.
I’m not convinced of anything at this point. Hillary’s judgement is in question. This “experience” standard has become a beltway groupthink orgy. I don’t buy it. One way or the other, the person is either a leader or they aren’t, and no amount of experience, nor any lack of experience, will change that basic requirement.
The president must be a wily politician, though one never makes it to that position without being one. Testing political skill and nothing else…THAT is what the beltway is great at. Hillary has that crowd in a daze up to this point.