The Poor Elephant's name was Newt, and he was in a fight something fierce for the Best Elephant in America contest, but he done spent all his money and people were all ignorin' him and looking at this real fancy elephant named Mitt. Well, a Rich Elephant by the name of Sheldon was a friend of Newt's, and he come up with a plan. By the rules, he couldn't give Newt any more money. But he could give money to a group of people who would go out and sing "We Love Newt, Newt is neat, Newt is the best elephant on the street!" and "Mitt is ugly, Mitt has a cough, Mitt made his money laying people off" all day long. So this group went on down to South Carolina and put a singer on every street corner. And that's how the Rich Elephant tried to buy a whole state for his good friend the Poor Elephant.
That's goin' in the OP.
No shit. Sheldon Adelson, casino tycoon and friend of Gingrich, dropped a cool $5 million into a Gingrich-aligned SuperPAC, which then turned around and spent $3.4 million in ad buys in South Carolina. According to the numbers I heard, that means the average TV viewer in South Carolina will see their ad some 70 times a day. For some comparison, Adelson put in $5 million in one go into the SuperPAC. Bachmann didn't raise that much money in an entire quarter. And Adelson's maximum personal contribution to the Gingrich campaign proper was $5,000. So he's only getting around it to the tune of 1000x his contribution limit.
This isn't even all of the context you could give it. The 2008 Democratic primary was the biggest funded primary ever in South Carolina. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton each spent about $1.5Million. Newt Gingrich, who isn't anywhere close to the lead, is prepared to drop more than both of them combined thanks to one guy, who we only even know about because he was willing to say so of his own accord.
There's already a feeling out there that it may be exactly this kind of dynamic that finally gets a more solid law or even a genuine amendment (or at least a serious attempt at one) for controls of campaign spending at least, if not donations and PACs. Not necessarily because of the inherent shadiness of it, but the inanity. This cycle around, it's looking like both the Democratic and Republican campaigns and their aligned PACs are likely to spend around a
billion dollars each on advertising. Five million bucks is buying Gingrich enough airtime for the Nielsen average viewer to see "his" messages that don't even have his name on them seventy times a day. There's a point of diminishing returns that was already seen in Iowa - there's only so many times you can advertise a candidate, especially with non-TV methods like mailers and autodialers (the average Iowan was getting something like six calls a night by the end) before you've not only saturated the market, but you start pissing off voters, especially your all-important swing voters who may decide to not vote at all.
In the end, it might not be principle or honesty that brings controls on American elections, but irritation and disgust when the Silent Majority says, "Enough is enough, stop with the goddamn ads."
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Topic: American Election Megathread - It's Over (Read 763402 times)