A look at an effort from a conservative website to try and alert their fellow-travelers to some fund-raising scams ....... and the push-back he received, after the jump ...
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Regular readers of mine know that I seldom wade into hard-core political junkie material in my writings here; others have far more expertise (and my strengths lie elsewhere, I believe).
But this week I was intrigued as to one story: how a conservative website waded into the subject as to how well fundraisers for the right were doing in spending the money they fundraised ..... or not-so-well, as the case may have been.
John Hawkins of Right Wing News (photo left, below) quoted Eric Hoffer's famous adage, "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." And then his group did some extensive work, publishing a 170-page report on the top 17 such groups, looking at the actual % of monies raised actually going to putative candidates and/or causes (rather than into the pockets of the fundraisers). One of the results:
The bottom 10 groups surveyed spent more than $54 million last year but contributed (only) slightly more than $3.6 million to Republican candidates.
This finding was picked-up by the syndicated columnist and National Review Online blogger
Jonah Goldberg (photo right, below) who publicized this report widely.
Now, this might seem a tad strange ... but Jonah, for all of his rants, will every once in a while take a hard look at his party. On the subject of religion he has some misgivings that he has shared: "I've attended dozens of conservative events where, as the speaker, I was, in effect, the guest of honor: and yet the opening invocation made no account of the fact that the guest of honor wasn't a Christian".
By publicizing this report, Goldberg was apparently trying to make two points: one, this report came from a conservative source (not the lib-rul media) and also that this was hurting conservative candidates ... as the original report asked: "How many conservative candidates lost in 2014 because of a lack of funds? How many of them came up short in primaries, lost winnable seats or desperately tried to fight off better-funded challengers? How much of a difference would another 50 million dollars have made last year?"
Jonah, though, has found that even noting this came from a friendly source was met with skepticism ... saying he got a lot of grief for bringing up the issue recently while filling as host of Bill Bennett’s radio show. I suspect the blow-back may be more pointed if it pertained to specific candidates (Sarah Palin and Ben Carson) than more generic causes.
But it also bumps-up against a more specific problem: the laissez-faire aspect, where conservative consumer protection generally does not go beyond Caveat Emptor. Diaries here at DK that talked about over-priced gold have been known for years, and as Amanda Marcotte notes, Fox often hires some of worst offenders. And even when some conservatives shine a light at egregious practices: some also sell their mailing lists to these same charlatans.
Perhaps someone else can wade into this topic more in-depth than I have the time for. Either way, to me the definitive essay on this topic came three years ago from the author Rick Perlstein in a long essay he wrote for The Baffler.
I'll summarize it to conclude tonight's diary ... but do read it (albeit a long read) as it is quite instructive at this link.
Entitled "The Long Con", it tells how he subscribed to many conservative publications and - as a byproduct - got on many a conservative mailing list with snake-oil sales pitches "overrunning my email box" unseen to those who only read conservative pitches aimed at mainstream media. Filled with "what the media REFUSE to tell you" pitches, it takes dead-aim at non-wealthy conservatives who often fall for appeals like this.
Perlstein said this stemmed from the founding of the conservative student group Young Americans for Freedom at the dawn of the 1960's and its then-operator Marvin Liebman. He inspired a young Richard Viguerie .... who took Liebman's fundraising ideas to such an extreme that as Perlstein wrote:
It all became too much for Marvin Liebman, the Dr. Frankenstein who had placed the business model in Viguerie's palpitating hands. Liebman told conservative apostate Alan Crawford, author of the valuable 1980 exposé Thunder on the Right, that Viguerie and company "rape the public." Another source familiar with the conservative direct-mail industry wondered to Crawford, "How anyone of any sensitivity can bear to read those letters scrawled by little old women on Social Security who are giving up a dollar they cannot afford to part with . . . without feeling bad is unbelievable."
Perlstein wrote that he once gave an address at a conservative think tank to a group of name right-wingers. After listing numerous instances of brazen falsehoods told by conservatives to stir-up its base, he asked why ... and cited our 37th president:
Why was it, I asked, that whenever Richard Nixon needed someone to brazen out some patently immoral, illegal, or dishonest act, he frequently and explicitly sought out a veteran of the conservative movement—the same conservatives whose ideology in policy contexts he usually derided? Because, I said, "Nixon knew that if you had a dirty job to get done, you got people who answered the description he made of E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy: 'good, healthy, right-wing exuberants.'"
After he finished his address, he thought surely someone would express contrition. Then conservative stalwart M. Stanton Evans stood up, and said this:
He said my invocation of Richard Nixon was inappropriate because Richard Nixon had never been a conservative. He proceeded, though, to make a striking admission: "I didn’t like Nixon until Watergate"—at which point, apparently, Nixon finally convinced conservatives he could be one of them.
Even if you have already read Perlstein's essay,
have another look - it's worth re-reading.
Good luck in trying to shame your movement's hucksters, Messrs. Hawkins and Goldberg ......................... you're gonna need it.
Let's clear-the-air with this John Mayall piano/drums tune, Marsha's Mood - from his 1967 The Blues Alone album.
Now, on to Top Comments:
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From Angie in WA State:
In the front-page story about how nearly 1/2 of Republicans do not believe in evolution - tapu dali has got the Republican Base pegged in his comment.
And from
Ed Tracey, your faithful correspondent this evening ........
In the front-page story about the continual imagination of Bill-O ........ RhodeIslandAspie reminds us that he walked away from the (actual) news business many years ago.
And in the front-page story about Carly Fiorina speaking at CPAC ....... ShoshannaD opens a thread about the legacy of Carly Fiorina's stewardship at Hewlett Packard - or lack thereof - which garnered some further elucidation.
TOP PHOTOS
February 26, 2015
Next - enjoy jotter's wonderful PictureQuilt™ below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment that features that photo.
(NOTE: Any missing images in the Quilt were removed because (a) they were from an unapproved source that somehow snuck through in the comments, or (b) it was an image from the DailyKos Image Library which didn't have permissions set to allow others to use it.)
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And lastly: yesterday's Top Mojo - mega-mojo to the intrepid mik ...... who rescued this feature from oblivion:
1) I think Jon Stewart has it right on this by ontheleftcoast — 126
2) O'Lielly was on the moon when Armstrong took by We Shall Overcome — 118
3) He works for a company that does service work by KimmieInIN — 117
4) Yes, but Dayton took over in tough circumstances by FischFry — 109
5) I heard that... by PvtJarHead — 108
6) O'Lielly said: "I told Neal, it was a small step by We Shall Overcome — 102
7) I Hear Ya. I Was Caught in the Boomer End of by Gooserock — 81
8) That was the single biggest mistake Jon made... by Antitheist — 68
9) Not so much 'uncertainty' as cynical exploitation by Ralphdog — 67
10) Stupidity is NOT Maladaptive. by Gooserock — 66
11) Minnesota seems like a state that by satrap — 66
12) Yay! Something positive about GA :) by YellowDogInGA — 65
13) Drive that wedge between O'Lielly and Faux ... by We Shall Overcome — 64
14) Will baking soda work on... by JeffW — 62
15) Wow, Police Work is Just Like Banking. You Get by Gooserock — 62
16) Israel has had nuclear weapons by gjohnsit — 61
17) Great statement by Kerry and great post by TomP — 61
18) Definitely a cultural element by ricklewsive — 61
19) "[E]normous positive reverberations," Bibi style: by oblomov — 59
20) Considering that the unfortunate Maryknoll by AnacharsisClootz — 58
21) The latest killing tactic. by jpmassar — 57
22) Someone will be along shortly.... by kharma — 56
23) How do I get one of those book deals? by rugbymom — 55
24) Thanks, also, for this diary; MN is probably by satrap — 54
25) My assumption is that her son is there because by Lily O Lady — 53
26) And a very special thank-you to the person.... by Rich in PA — 52
27) Critical question: Which state do you govern? by ericlewis0 — 52
28) The Israeli Neo-Cons love it when by anon004 — 51
29) Hearing the truth loud and clear from by ObserverinMontreal — 51
30) Typical Neocon double-speak by DWG — 51