Much will be made of this . . .
Now they are deploying their vast wealth in the political arena, providing almost half of all the seed money raised to support Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. Just 158 families, along with companies they own or control, contributed $176 million in the first phase of the campaign, a New York Times investigation found. Not since before Watergate have so few people and businesses provided so much early money in a campaign, most of it through channels legalized by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision five years ago.
Pretty sensational right — and you oughta see the graphs. But it is a typical NY Times “expose” hit piece. One interesting aspect of it that came immediately to mind was, the Times cites the number of families, not the the number of candidates it is dispersed to. Their selection of this universe, unsurprisingly, shows it heavily Republican-leaning – 138 support Republicans. Nor does it spell out the amount of $ in the aggregate, these families have given, Republican vs. Democrat or the figures on a per candidate basis.
Keep in mind that there are or have been 16 announced credible candidates in the Republican primary so far. By credible we mean they have achieved some political achievement having been elected governor or senator of a state or standing in the polls in previous primaries. The Democrats have four of that stature announced.
So to continue the ridiculous irrelevant arbitrary analysis of the NYT, if all “families” gave equal amounts, one would expect roughly four times more giving to Republicans. But the 20 families said to be giving to Democrats is dispersed to but four candidates, call it five families per candidate. Republicans have 8.6 families per candidate. The NYT with their equally ridiculous gee-wiz graphs would like readers to believe that individual Republicans are the tools of those “families” when Democrats are more heavily dependent on a smaller number.
We are wondering as well if George Soros alone may have given more to Democrats than all the “Republican” families in total — particularly if all the money is counted that he has provided to his “charities” which we do not hesitate to point out are essentially political operations.
But the whole purposely dark connotations aimed at Republican presidential aspirants, and with the NYT using the Citizens United case as the evil backdrop (evil in NYT parlance because it diminishes the power of media corporations like the NYT) are silly for still more reasons.
No matter what the level of the race — municipal, state, federal or presidential — early money is generally from a few. All the way down to alderman, candidates identify relatively well fixed individuals or true believers who may be persuaded to give to their campaign. The race then becomes about persuading vox populi to vote for the candidate. And that gets down to bribery, something Democrats also excel at.
DLH and R Mall
