Ya know, it’s kind of funny how karma has a way of coming around to bite you in the ass when you’re a narcissistic egomaniac. And the really funny part is not just that The Orange Julius has totally screwed himself, it’s the fact that he’s taken the entire GOP ticket down the rabbit hole with him.
Trumpenstein is nothing if not consistent. In the primaries he trumpeted to the skies the fact that he was not taking any outside money, he was totally “self funding”. He bragged that he didn’t have a Super PAC, he was beholden to nobody. This was effective in the primaries, it allowed him to chastise opponents in debates and on the stump for their Super PAC’s and deep pocket major donors while bragging about his independence.
Never mind that it wasn’t necessarily true. Trump took “individual” donations from supporters, and he made tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars off of the sale of “Trump Gear” at his rallies. What the hell, it played well with the base and gave him leverage over his opponents.
But the party? They could smell big trouble in the wind. If he was nominated, he would by rules get significant support from the GOP for his general election campaign. Trump had run his primary campaign on a shoestring, no ground game, no infrastructure, used his own plane for his travel, and did everything in his power to make sure he slept in Trump Tower every night. This didn’t help the RNC, they needed money!
In the days following The Cheeto Prophet sealing up the nomination in the primaries, both the RNC and the major donors begged him to use the 5 weeks before the convention to get out there and fund raise. Hit the phones to major donors, get out there and do some fundraising dinners and speeches, kick something into the kitty, not only his kitty, but into the RNC coffers to give them something to work with down the line.
Count Trumpula couldn’t be bothered, he had his own agenda. He spent the next five weeks getting into a series of endless, self destructive pissing contests with a Mexican American judge, random prior opponents over their loyalty, and the media. In the last week or so before the convention he finally put his big boy pants on and did a couple of fundraisers for himself and the GOP, but he was late to the party. Fundraising was lagging far behind previous cycles. Partly because of his lethargic effort, but also because of the general distaste of the deep pocket donors for Trump.
The worst fears of the RNC were realized. Once he became the nominee of the Republican Party, Trump started raiding the RNC coffers, charging them for the rent in his own office building for his campaign staff, charging them for renting rooms in his own properties for appearances and events, and for the expenses of using his own jet. Worst of all, at the best he was still a spotty fundraiser, and the Deep Wallet donors were still resistant to him, not donating to the RNC so that no money would go to Trump, concentrating instead on the down ballot races.
Yet he continued to excoriate Hillary for her Big Donor ties, her Super PAC’s and her multiple high dollar fundraisers, not only for herself but for the party. Forget the fact that he had long ago stopped putting any money into his own campaign, but was now leaching off of the RNC, both for money and logistical support, it played well with the base.
Here’s the thing, the RNC is officially fucked. They are fund starved, not only to fuel The Trumpster Fire, but to keep support going for their down ballot candidates. And the worse Trump gets, the more the donations to the RNC reduce to a trickle. Hell, they just took out a $15M line of credit to try to save the Senate! The campaign is constantly going into battleground states to advertise, and then pulling out again when the polls turn against them. GOP field offices are under tremendous strain, trying desperately to not only shore up Trump’s non existent operations, but to support local candidates.
Now, let’s look at Hillary. She has fund raised like the dickens. And now that she has the Presidential race well in hand, not only can she and the party use some of that loose change to expand the map into states that Trumpitania has helped to put into play, like AZ, NC, GA and even TX, but they are able to start funding local field operations to to support down ballot candidates that can flip the Senate, and put the House seriously in play.
Let this be a lesson to all future rich shitpokes of either party who are tempted to go down the “self funding” path. If you do that, you’d better be ready to go all in, as much as it takes. And you’d better be ready to fund raise your ass off for the party if not for yourself. If not, not only are you in for a nasty fall, but you’re going to take everybody else right on down with you. Just ask “Mr. YUUUUUUGE”.
Thanks as always for reading, you are ALL the wind beneath my wings!
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