Raise your hand if you're surprised more donations are going to the DNC now than the GOP. Anyone? On Saturday, the Washington Post ran an article about the big fundraising gains that the Democratic party is posting in comparison with their Republican counterparts, and I swear there was more than a hint of surprise in the article's tone.
I'm not sure why, really, and my confusion with their surprise has nothing to do with my political bend.
The fact of the matter is, when times get hard, voters often turn to the hardliners in the political circus - those that naturally talk the loudest and make the biggest promises about "cleaning up". However, when those same hardliners get voted into office in large numbers, as we saw happen in the 2010 midterm elections, but they fail to do anything close to what they promised to do, those same voters begin to sour on the hardliners.
The voters start to look for the more moderate-leaning politicians. Unfortunately for the GOP, the field is looking pretty spare when it comes to moderates. The Republican party seems to be of the impression that it is still 2010, that we didn't just go through several stomach-churning rounds of political and budgetary deadlock (driven in many cases by those same hardliners), and that the way to the donors' hearts is through political rhetoric about how conservative they are.
I think the fundraising numbers that President Obama and the Democratic party in general are posting should be a wake-up call for the GOP. As Representative Steve Israel of New York is quoted as saying in the above article, “When Republicans consistently protect billionaires over Medicare, it’s hard to convince small donors to give a check.”
And yet, I keep reading articles expressing surprise about how well the DNC seems to be doing on the fundraising front. So, I can only assume that no one is heeding this particular wake-up call.
I think the current situation for Republicans is summed up best by the 170 comments that followed the article, very few of which in any way seemed to support the Republican party. Most appeared centered around the idea of ousting the GOP from the offices they just gained.
I don't think it gets more telling than that.
-- Statler, forum moderator
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