It also came out today that the RNC audit showed that Steele's folks are spending $1.09 in costs for every $1.00 they raise from big dollar donors.

Maybe it's the return part of a handshake deal for the GOP basically convincing the Dems in 2004 that John Kerry was a good idea

SI

That's a slightly worse ratio than the federal government, if you replace big dollar donars with taxpayers. (regardless of the party running it).

Political parties are so backwards. The natural reaction to this seems to be the Democrats bringing it up, and the Republicans defending it/minimizing it.

But if someone's a Republican, why doesn't this nonsense piss them off and encourage them to jump ship? Why would you want to donate money to a group like this?

The Daily Show was merciless on them for that exact reason during this actual event. Well worth checking out.

Dems, GOP spend two-thirds of budget on parties, ‘pampered adventures’

Where exactly are they going to go? Vote 3rd party? :lol: :lol: :lol: :(

Why not? Neither of these parties will ever see a dime from me. My one vote for an independent/third party won't change any elections, but my one vote for any established candidate isn't going to turn an election either.

I did small donor fundraising one summer and left when I found out how little actually went to the campaign. I would never give a penny to any national political organization.

I don't suppose there's more to that story to share? I'm not asking about the candidate you worked for or anything but what you found out about political fundraising

SI

I voted 3rd party in the last election as well. However my uneducated mind believes that people in this country are more likely to vote AGAINST a candidate/party than FOR a candidate/party so voting 3rd party will have that "wasted vote" stigma for the forseeable future.

It was with the DNC when McAuliffe was still in charge. We had a meeting where we were discouraged from spending any time on donations under 100$ except for getting emails. I don't recall the exact percentage, but it was something close to 90% of the money we raised went back into our operation. The whole point wasn't to get instant donations, but to get contact info where people could be pressured for larger donations. All of the people who were thrilled to be able to give ten or twenty bucks because they wanted Bush out of office weren't helping at all.

I found the info and the attitude of the people running the operation disgusting. It was nothing but a long-term shakedown.

that's fucking gross

:+1: :mad:

Gallup poll shows that party affiliation numbers are nearly back to even again, mostly due to a large independent swing back towards the Republicans in the past 1 1/2 years........

http://www.gallup.com/poll/127499/Pa..._term=Politics

But will you still argue that pollsters should use party ID numbers from the previous election?

Most use projections based on polls such as this one, do they not? I believe I've made the argument that party turnout should use the previous election numbers. This poll backs up that assertion, since it shows that Dem/Rep party numbers remain unchanged. The change occurs in independents, not party voters. The middle voters are where you have to use more current assessments in the polls.

Lacking a better place to post it, I'll just throw this in here since there's certainly an element of catch-all political to the thread. It's a great quote I saw over the weekend from an upstart candidate for Georgia governor but I believe there's at least some part of it that's applicable to conversations about third party candidates at the federal level.


That very simple factor probably shouldn't be overlooked when assessing the hopes of any third party candidate at any level.

Definitely. See 1992, for instance.

General agreement amongst economists that stimulus package had no impact on economy..........

Economists say the stimulus didn't help - Apr. 26, 2010

Please read and resubmit your post.

I read the entire thing. It was very clear what the article was reporting.

Just because two words start with e doesn't mean they are the same word.

I guess I shouldn't act surprised that you're looking for any way to distract from the discussion in the article.

This trend seems to be going the exact opposite way that Obama and the Democrats need it to go. Less energized young voters is a BAD sign for November.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/127526/Yo...ting-Year.aspx

Funny that I'm trying to point out what the article actually says while you're saying something not in the article, but I'm the one trying to distract.

Good follow up post to the article I cited. No mention of stimulus anywhere in that article, which is a big indicator of just how disappointing it has been. They cite the disappointing unemployment rate despite the growth in the economy. It's a shame we had to spend $787B of taxpayer money to find out that stimulus packages don't work.

Fair enough. I guess it's more important to win a nit-picking argument than to discuss the poor decision-making of our leaders. It doesn't save any money, while billions were wasted on the other end.

Does having Rush Limbaugh's hand up your ass all the time hurt?

I don't think anyone is questioning what these economists are noting. Tossing a bunch of money at something is going to make something happen, but in the end as noted in that article, it would have happened anyway. Under the most optimistic of assessments, it allowed the recovery to begin a month or two early. That's not worth putting the country $787B further in debt IMO. Perhaps you think it's OK, but I don't. We didn't achieve anything that couldn't have been done without the massive spending.

The stimulus did exactly what was expected, it raised GDP by 3 to 4% in the last two quarters of 2009. Employment hasn't picked up, but you have a difficult argument saying it would have been better with 3 to 4% lower growth.

And for the one gajillionith time, it wasn't all spending, nearly 40% was in tax cuts and out of the spending less than half was spent last year. Of course those facts are probably also a distraction.

JPhillips and his dirty Jedi mind tricks.

Do you have an opinion on the subject or are you just looking to pigeonhole anyone who has a fiscally conservative viewpoint? I'm not a fan of Limbaugh at all, but don't let that stop you. You may find the huge debt that we're in to be amusing, but I don't in any way.

The two of you should get your story straight.

I think he's just looking to pigeonhole you, MBBF.

It doesn't matter how it's added up. Whether it's spending or tax cuts, it's increasing our debt at a time when that's the last thing we need to do.

It's true. I'm a pigeonholer. It's not something I'm proud of.

Those two statements are not mutually exclusive in any way.

If we want to save serious money, pull out of a couple wars, bring home the many many people in the services who are stationed in foreign lands, and cut defense spending.

It's an unfortunate situation. I can see how someone would look to make jokes about the situation to avoid the real issues facing the country. I'm not one of those. It's embarrassing that we continue to excuse the poor leadership of our country over the last few years.

Kodos, he was against all of those things too! He just never said it.

So now you're for allowing all the Bush tax cuts to expire?

You'll have to talk to the guy who was going to make those 'changes'. I certainly don't disagree as long as it's done responsibly.

Few years? We haven't had a good leader since the 90s.

Somebody's going to have to yank this economy back out of the mess it's in. If the politicians refuse to do it, I guess the taxpayers are going to be required to pay for the stupidity of the politicians currently in office. It's a sad situation.

There's a separate thread for that. We're talking about the current lousy 'leaders' in this thread.

Well, ignoring the messenger for a moment, for the low low price of say 700 billion dollars I could have fixed the unemployment rate for you, I'm sure at the low price of say, a million per job, I can create 700,000 jobs. I'm sure that could trigger a recovery.

What we spent for the limited results is the problem. Stimulus was a pork bill, it fed certain fat cats well, and a lot of people a lil bit. Meanwhile the debt will linger for a long while (or we have an inflation boom, there are no other alternatives, and at certain levels of debt you only have the option of the inflation boom).

I know this is the 'rah rah Obama' and 'bash Obama' thread, but liberals and conservatives alike need to use their heads and look at this garbage that all of our leaders are doing.

Well, ignoring the messenger for a moment, this is exactly what I've posted on several occasions in this thread. It's called common sense whether some want to believe it or not.

And again, 700 billion wasn't spent.

Okay, prorate the results for what was spent if you want to get technical... the point is the amount spent for the results gained is garbage.

At this point I think the spending is around 300 billion with the tax cuts around 200. Yes, it's still a lot of money, but the whole "we spent 700 billion and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" bit isn't close to accurate.