Saturday, November 10, 2012

 

Was Money Important?

Before this election, many people (including me) worried about the effect of unregulated political money being spent for and against candidates by Super-PAC's like Karl Rove's Crossroads groups, which spent over $175 million on the presidential race, twelve Senate races, and nine races in the U.S. House, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

That's a lot of money, but it didn't work. Romney lost, as did ten of the twelve Senate candidates and four of the nine House candidates.

Could it be that the effects of the Citizen's United case (which ruled unconstitutional the existing legal limits on groups like those run by Rove) are not as significant as we feared?

Comments:
All the GOP money was directed at white males. It worked and was a major factor. It prevented a rout. The Romney campaign and the outside money relied on messages that appealed to their base instincts hoping to secure this vote. They succeeded, but unfortunately this message was unattractive to everyone else. That is why a bunch of billionaires didn't win their bet, but they did have an outsized influence. Dad
 
I agree - Dads insight is on target!
 
My take is that the money does not change, or even influence,any but a handful of votes.

The only role of the money is self defense, to match the opposition, so that a candidate's supporters sees as many of their guy's ads, and therefore are motivated to keep working to get out the vote.
 
I believe it does work - in ways much more subtle than election results.

Do the math, Sheldon Adelson's 100 million + 'investment' in simply his advocacy for eliminating the inheritance tax was worth every penny. His return on investment would have resulted in a 2 billion return (for he and his heirs)if Romney had won.

Tax compromise inevitability may not produce the 200% return he sought - Place your bets on what the return will be after compromise. Still a tidy sum. . .

With interest compounding, outliving methuselah exponentially and without touching my IRA's until retirement in '2215', would my financial statement be close?

Money influences. . .
 
It was all spent on TV. Unless they were buying ads on Hulu, people like me would never see them (even if I did live in a swing state).
 
The proof that money in politics is effective and is deemed a good investment is already in. Money is pouring in to influence the fiscal cliff conversation.
The money spent in the election was not well spent but was successful in keeping issues of regulation, global warming, financial reform, supreme court appointments and many other concerns of the donors off the table. The muscle of money also influenced many local elections.

News Corp ( Rupert Murdock ) and Clear Channel ( Bain Capital ) will continue to work in the their own interests. The health (Tom Dashle)
and financial (Chris Dodd) industries offer $1,000,000 yr salaries to supportive public officials. Money will continue to dominate the process because it works. Money threatens both earnest progressive and conservative voices.
Dad

 
Post a Comment



<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

#