Let's not get complacent

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse for “President” Bush within his own party… something comes along that makes you giggle like a schoolgirl.

During the most recent campaign finance-filing period, covering contributions and spending through April 30, the NRCC (National republican Congressional Committee) trailed the D Triple C (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) by $7.75 million in cash-on-hand or $9.87 million when debts and obligations are included.

Usually, republicans could bank on the President to bail them out of a financial mess such as this… but therein ‘lies the rub.’

During last year’s midterms, some gop lawmakers and candidates didn’t want the leader of their party to stump for them… then some of them started to break away from him about Iraq… then it was his Immigration bill that caused some inter-party friction.

And now? Now it’s “President” Bush’s money-raising ability ( or rather, the lack thereof) that’s garnering attention from Liberals and is putting republicans into a tight spot.

In the last few weeks, his money-raising prowess for the party has waned, ebbed… and yes, even diminished.

Case in point; the organizers of a congressional republican fund-raising dinner happening tonight don’t think they will be able to raise the kind of money they used to, despite Bush being the “main attraction.”

All of this is indicative of two things: first, President Bush isn't just unpopular with some of the more Liberal republicans, but with the republican base as well… but anyone with a brain probably knew that already.

Second, the Republican base is not getting engaged in this cycle's elections, which could be a real problem for the gop as we inch closer to election day.

All of this brings to mind one question; is this a good thing for the Democrats?

While it would be easy to say ‘yes’, I would suggest a little cautious optimism.

Sure, it would be great to say that the Democrats have the elections in the next couple of years all sewn-up thanks in part to the gop’s current fundraising strife, but let’s keep in mind that we are talking about republicans, and they have shown many, many times before that they can raise money faster than John Kerry can flip-flop.

And let’s also keep in mind that we could be only one polarizing event away from the conservative base regrouping, most likely under a different standard bearer (they seem to be pinning their hopes on Fred Thompson as of now) but regrouping nonetheless.

And with a regrouping comes a re-energizing of the party anda rise in contributions as a major effort to shore up a now floundering party and advance whatever they will come to accept as their rallying cry (Immigration? Terrorism? Healthcare? Oil?)

The point is that Democrats cannot sit idly by and think that they have the next couple of election cycles in the bag. Instead they need to continue to be diligent in their efforts to out-raise the gop, present a single, united candidate who could return something not just to the White House, but the government itself…

And that’s the will of the American people.

Fundraising troubles for the gop

As if we needed more proof that the American people are sick of the conservatives currently in power comes this tasty tidbit of information.

The republican party held their annual fundraising gala last night with “President” Bush and a gaggle of lemmings republicans in attendance. The event raised $10.5 million for the national republican party… not a bad amount, but it is the smallest amount raised at this event in the past few years.

Cue the Liberal laughter…

Last year the event fetched $17 million, in 2005 it raised $15 million, a record $38.5 million in Bush’s re-election year of 204 and $14 million in 2003.

Ouch… down 30% from the baseline and 75% from the peak… that’s gotta hoit…

Especially coming on the heels of the gop losing control of both houses a few months ago, keeping that in mind and the incredibly low amount is telling.

The republicans have always been known for their fundraising prowess, which is also an electoral strength for them (that and fear) and it’s not a good sign for them to see such a significant plunge in one of their top fundraising events.

I wonder if it has anything to do with Bush himself??

One word answer: yes.

Bush, his cronies administration and his policies have all broken the gop from their center, broken them from the military and broken them from the people that matter most to republicans… rich white men people with money.

Essentially Bush has screwed the party with its pants on… and Cheney is helping him when he says things like “we didn’t get elected to worry just about the fate of the Republican Party”

Lovely… sure the party loved to hear that.

While all of this republican in-fighting and fundraising difficulty is enjoyable news, let’s not start congratulating ourselves TOO much. There’s still a long ways to go and much work left to be done…

But this certainly helps… so let’s keep it up.

The Weekly Rewind

Short week, short rewind… enjoy:

Applaud: to Joe Klein. (Yes, you read that right, we’re applauding Joe Klein) It seems as though the comprehension of just how big a mess Bush has made things has reached his brain. In the coming issue of Time magazine, he concludes with a statement that is making some wonder if he is hinting that “President” Bush ought to be impeached. He claims, in referring to the president, that he has “tried to be respectful of the man and the office” but now he recognizes that the “defining sins” of his administration “are congenital: they’re part of his personality. They’re not likely to change. And it is increasingly difficult to imagine yet another two years of slow bleed with a leader so clearly unfit to lead.” (Welcome to the club Joe, we’ve got jackets…)

Heckle: to conservative pundits that have been piling on Madame Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for covering her head with a scarf while in Syria this past week. Uh, excuse me… I seem to have recollections of Laura Bush AND Secretary of State Condi Rice doing the same thing so, rather than take the high road I’ll just say this: STFU.

Applaud: to once again showing that she has bigger balls than the “rich white men” in the White House. After numerous conservative pundits and the president attacked her trip to Syria and claimed she delivered the wrong message to Syria from Israel, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is asking, nee, begging the White House to prove it… and oddly enough, the White House hasn’t said a damn thing yet… I wonder why??? It is so hard to express sarcasm in the written form…

Heckle: to, as always, “President” Bush as he’s decided to once again flip-off the Constitution and appointed three officials that wouldn’t have been approved by the Senate so he decided to take the cowards way out and once again did what he wanted and ignored little things like process and law… 2009 can NOT come fast enough…

Applaud: to the release of the British sailors, which, according to a lot of policy experts, was aided by the Bush(whacked) Administration NOT helping. That says a lot about our standing in the world, doesn’t it?

Heckle: to AG Alberto Gonzales. Why? Two words: Attorney. Gate. Even while another member of his staff takes the fall resigns, he’s practicing his testimony while the Senate threatens subpoenas. (again, as I’ve said before, how much longer can Bush keep this albatross around his neck until he gets rid of him?)

Applaud: to more facts & records coming to light that show (surprise, surprise) Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s regime was “not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda” before the US-led invasion… despite the Bush(whacked) Administration’s insistence that it was… (Color me NOT surprised)

Heckle: to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). We at TBWA have, in the past, voiced our support and backing for the former POW… but now he seems to have turned into a gop version of John Kerry; flip-flopping to appease the audience he’s talking to. After a disastrous fundraising quarter, he was further criticized for taking a photo-op “stroll” through a Baghdad neighborhood that subsequently blew up in his face… now after all that, word has leaked that next week he will try to turn his campaign around by suggesting that the war in Iraq is winnable. (You sometimes have to wonder just how much he wants to be president…)

Heckle: to messing with tradition (again). “President” Bush didn’t throw out a first pitch this baseball season, making it the second time in as many years that he didn’t. His people said he was too busy, people with a brain say he didn’t want to get booed… who do you think is right?

This week’s WingNut Tool of the Week: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (D-GA). For putting his foot into his mouth about Spanish being the ‘language of the ghetto’ than, when trying to back-peddle in a panic, trying to say he was referring to Hebrew… wait, what?

And the week that was in the 2008 Presidential election. As mentioned earlier this week, First Quarter fundraising numbers were released and the Dems kicked butt… let’s hope they can keep it up. On the left: Obama moved to a larger campaign headquarters… Clinton got some R&R… Edwards announced he won’t be attending the Fox “News”/CBC debate… Richardson announced that he will co-head a private bipartisan delegation to North Korea next week… Biden and Dodd kept relatively quiet this week after their relatively poor first quarter fundraising results. On the right: McCain screwed up (again)… Romney tried to act more macho than he is (again)… Thompson is threatening talking about running (again)… Giuliani is severing ties with his business… Brownback was to participate in the Annual Statewide Iowa Prayer Breakfast and… well, that was really it for him…

Take ‘em as you will…

Fundraising: Part 2

The other day I posted about first quarter fundraising numbers for all the main (read: real) 2008 Presidential candidates…

And now… with all the first quarter numbers in, I think it’s safe to say, at least one has to think that it is safe to say, that republicans are shaking in their proverbial boots… after all… Democrats beat them by $27 million dollars.

On the republican side, Romney grabbed $23, Giuliani hit $15, McCain underachieved at $12.5 and Huckabee raised a rather pathetic $500,000 for a total of $51 million.

Then come the Democrats, Clinton nailed $26, Obama struck at $25, Edwards grabbed $14, Richardson raised a respectable $6, Dodd hit a tidy $4 and Biden netted $3 for a total of $78 million…

Granted, more fundraising does not a president make… but it’s a damn good start.

Rather than put the Democrats under the microscope, let’s put the republicans under the microscope and see what all this means for them.

After all, as they say; the proof is in the pudding… or in this case, the money…

It’s a popular consensus that out of all the candidates, McCain, even though he raised $12.5 million, was hit hardest as his rather low amounts are troublesome signs of an already-floundering campaign that is seeing its campaign finance operation overhauled due to the less than expected fundraising amounts.

And he hasn’t even “officially” announced his candidacy yet.

Romney, on the other hand, is enjoying the feeling that $23 million can bring.

Too bad he’s at 2-3% in the polls, which means that while he has a lot more money than the other guys, with his low polling, he's going to have to spend a lot more money to catch up.

And then there’s Giuliani, who raised $15 million. Fifteen is an impressive act when you consider the late start his campaign got, but the looming question with him is if he can build on that or not. And the popular thinking is that he won’t, primarily because the gop base doesn’t trust him and are leery about his wife-sitting-in-on-cabinet-meeting-ways.

And Huckabee… well, the less said about that the better…

With these numbers, it’s hard to argue that going forward the Democrats seem to have the energy and momentum… after all, the top two Democrats out-raised the top Republican. And let’s face it, with the incredibly early start of this race coupled with the fact that states that usually don’t matter are suddenly mattering, this race is going to come down to who has the most cash… and if the Dems can out-distance the republicans, the republicans won’t have a whole helluva lot left to work with.

Ain’t it grand?

Apparently, money does grow on trees

First quarter campaign fundraising numbers have been announced, and Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton (D-NY) raised a whopping $26 million (with an additional $10-11 million being transferred from her Senate campaign war-chest), thus easily surpassing her opponents with Senator John Edwards netting $14 million, Senator Joseph Biden $3 million, Senator Chris Dodd $4 million (whom also transferred an additional $5 million from his Senate account) and Governor Bill Richardson $6 million.

Senator Barack Obama, as of this writing, hasn’t officially released his numbers in what is either an astute move to keep his cards close to the vest or avoiding the risk of embarrassment over a lousy quarter… though there are reporting starting to come out that Obama raised approximately $20 million, but nothing official has been announced.

On the republican side, Mitt Romney (R-MA) packed away an impressive $21 million (or $23 mil, depending on which article you read…), easily pulling away from party rivals Rudy Giuliani ($15 million) and John McCain ($12.5 million).

What about the others you ask? Well… they barely raised enough to get noticed (for instance Governor Mike Huckabee raised a scant $500,000), so we’ll ignore them for now…

To date, Democratic and republican candidates have reported more than $80 million in combined campaign fundraising for the first three months of the year, and in the process obliterated the old record of $30.9 million set in the corresponding period of the 2004 campaign.

This election is going to put a lot of stock into early cash because candidates will have to bankroll a plethora of cross-country flights, a veritable army of political consultants and a slew of advertising… and that’s only going to be for the “First Elections” of nominating.

Think about it, with so many states trying to squeeze their primaries into January and February, all candidates will have to focus a lot on those states all at once rather than separating them out as they did in the past.

Then comes the “real” election in November… and who knows how things will be shaping up at that time.

Why is all of this important? Because the huge fundraising hauls with 10 months to go before the first nominating ballots are even cast are an indication of just how competitive (and dirty?), and tight this race is going to be.

Add to that that experts are already declaring that the 2008 election may reach one billion dollars and will go down in history as the most expensive presidential race on record (at least until 2012 rolls around…), and you have the makings for one heck of a political side-show.

And furthermore… by ignoring public money and the restrictions that go with it, we are once again seeing the corporate purchase of America. With all the money being spent by companies and corporations, how do you actually elect a good and honest person (that is if there are any left in the world) that you can trust to do what is right for the country and is not beholden to either Haliburton or (the next) Enron?

Stay tuned…