The scramble for donors
It doesn't matter if they get a dollar - GOP donors are just looking for numbers. Is that really a good way to select a candidate?
I hear from a lot of conservative organizations, but there’s a certain appeal which is reaching a fever pitch, with all sorts of crazy incentives. Here’s one example that came last week:
Because of your tireless work advocating and fighting for conservative values, we want to send you Mark Levin’s new book, “The Democrat Party Hates America,” for just $1. (You’ll be one of the first to receive a copy when it’s released this fall.)
At SOS America PAC, we believe EVERY patriot needs to read Mark’s new book...because we need to know what we’re up against.
Our nation is at a crossroads, and it’s clear that yesterday’s solutions will no longer work...and yesterday’s campaign tactics to defeat the Left won’t work either.
We need bold ideas, new energy, and fresh blood. And we’re counting on you to stay informed and stay in this fight.
Actually I wouldn’t mind having the book, but here’s how they figured out I do “tireless work advocating and fighting for conservative values.” (Hint: it has nothing to do with this Substack.) Instead, this is the really fine print at the bottom:
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I joined Parler maybe two years ago but I’ll bet I haven’t been on the site in a year or more. I just didn’t like the interface and it didn’t do much for my readership.
But it’s not just this PAC, which I found out is affiliated with Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, one of the latest candidates to jump into this race.
Somewhere along the line, my cell phone number made it onto a list of prospective voter numbers, and even though I told a few to stop I think all that did was prove the number was valid. So now I get junk texts from several candidates which also proved how desperate they were for individual contributions: while Suarez would send me a book for a buck, Nikki Haley would have sent me a T-shirt for $5 and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum would send me a $20 gift card for $1. (That’s the photo up top.) Talk about burning through cash, but I think the guy is a millionaire.
Even House and Senate candidates from other states beseech me for contributions, even though I can’t vote for them.
And of course I get a batch of crap from Donald Trump and affiliated organizations, which really annoys me since he won’t debate. Apparently he thinks he’s entitled to the GOP nomination, which doesn’t fly with me - as you may have read a couple weeks back.
If the Republican Party is going to have this system to determine which candidates will make the debate, why not up the stakes?
Get everyone who qualifies for the debate to agree that they’ll do an American Idol-style vote at the end of the program. The debate lasts 90 minutes and the phones open up for the last 30 minutes of the program. No, we won’t make the bottom-feeders sing for survival, but the persons who finish in the bottom two would be requested to drop out and barred from future debates. Have monthly debates from August to November and see who’s left.
This would also be a sneaky way to point out the issues with the election system. If they could take a half-hour to determine which Republicans should withdraw from the race, why does it take days or weeks to determine an election winner?
Seriously, every time we have a Presidential election, I think the way we select them can’t get any worse. And every time I’m wrong.
I’ve always believed that we should work backwards from the major party conventions, which would be held around Labor Day. Starting around the middle of June, we have six groups of eight states apiece have regional primaries, with the order changing every four years so that the last group in one cycle leads off the next, the first bumps back to second, and so on. Iowa can do its caucus and New Hampshire can have their “first-in-the-nation” primary, but they would occur around Memorial Day.
One thing I like about Delaware (and used to like about Maryland before they changed the law) is that our state primary is in September, when everyone starts paying attention. (We just need a little later filing deadline.) Can you tell I dislike perpetual campaigns? Selecting two major-party candidates months before the election is ridiculous, and something tells me a lot of people regret their hastily-made spring primary choice when the heat wilts their campaign during the summer. Unless you’re a New Jersey Democrat, you’re stuck with your bad decision. (And I guarantee the same courtesy wouldn’t apply to Republicans should they nominate Donald Trump and he’s subsequently convicted of whatever crimes they concocted up this week.)
I like the maximum time possible with the maximum number of candidates to choose from. Having a presidential candidate coronation eight months before the election is exactly why we get such lousy candidates to choose from, but that’s the way the uniparty duopoly seems to think we deserve.
This style of gathering campaign contributions shows the folly of our current system, particularly how states try to leapfrog each other with primaries further and further away timewise from the general election, which itself has devolved from Election Day to Election Month. Let’s see what we can do to change it next time around.