Republican Billionaires Just Can't Seem to Buy This Election

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/34035-republican-billionaires-just-cant-seem-to-buy-this-election

Rove’s 2012 crash is having profound effects on the 2016 Republican primary. To begin with, George W. Bush’s Brain is no longer considered much of a brain. “I gave Rove $500,000. What did I get for it? Nothing!” Langone told me. Two of Rove’s most generous 2012 funders, Texas billionaires Bob Perry and Harold Simmons, have since passed away, and their heirs have turned off the cash spigot. “Everyone is still shocked Romney lost,” says Simmons’s widow, Annette. “I haven’t committed at all.” So far this year, Crossroads has raised just $784,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Rove insists he’s still a player. “We’ll be involved in the Senate races,” he told me. “Depending on who the presidential nominee is, we may be involved in that, but that’s a long way off.” What Rove is not is anywhere near the center of the Republican Party. “But for his perch on Fox News, Karl would be in political Siberia,” says a top Republican strategist. “The going joke is that he must have a picture of Roger Ailes in his underwear to keep his contract.”

It’s not just that Rove is personally marginalized. Donors have awakened to the realization that topflight consultants can earn millions from campaigns regardless of whether they win. “It bothers a lot of people that politics has become a cottage industry. Everyone is taking a piece of this and a slice of that,” says California winemaker John Jordan, a former Rove donor. “Crossroads treated me like a child with these investor conference calls where they wouldn’t tell you what was really going on. They offered platitudes and a newsletter.”

<snip>


Perhaps Bush is the perfect case study: The candidate who has underperformed the most is the one with a 2012-style campaign, who steered all his major donors into one super-pac. That organization, Right to Rise USA, is run by the grizzled strategist Mike Murphy, who succeeded in bundling a $100 million war chest and is now finding himself on the receiving end of donor backlash. Last month, for instance, a group of major Bush supporters held a conference call to vent about Murphy after he outlined his strategy in an interview to Bloomberg Politics. “These guys got rip-shit,” said one person briefed on the call.

But the most important lesson the billionaires are learning this year is that they aren’t much better at politics than Karl Rove. Well, not true. There is one billionaire who seems to have contemporary Republican politics figured out. “This is no longer a meteor going through the sky,” Langone told me, observing Donald Trump’s dominance over the race and sounding just shy of panicked. “He’s been in the lead 116 of 120 days.”

[Blue Owl]

1. Did you hear about the embarrassing Koch Bros. gift incident?

http://www.theonion.com/article/koch-brothers-get-each-other-same-election-christm-52012

[Monk06]

2. What happens when polititians are so rich that they can't be tempted with mere 100K

campaign donations and trips to Aspen

If the price of a congressman or a pres candidate goes up to 100 Million the Kochs and Adelsons may not be able to afford politics anymore.

[Scuba]

3. Are you sure? Hillary is way ahead in the polls.

[pampango]

5. The republicans have one of those too. And he is a genuine billionaire.

Billionaire politicians seem to be doing just fine. Billionaire donors may be having a harder time of it this cycle.

[RobinA]

4. Billionaires

can only buy elections if voters let them. Apparently in this case, certain voters aren't buying what the billionaires are selling. At this time, anyway. The election is a long way off.

[Orsino]

6. They don't have to, when they can just buy most of the candidates...

...and slap lines on whatever bits they can't buy.