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October 30, 2006
Democrats: The Party of the Rich
Posted by Dave Blount at October 30, 2006 11:48 AM
Populist rhetoric aside, you have to be pretty well-heeled to afford liberal ideology these days. Libs characterize Republicans as the Party of the Rich, but as Peter Schweizer documents, the Democratic Party has a much better claim to that title.
The anti–First Amendment charade known as "campaign finance reform" resulted in a new funnel through which the rich could pour money into the pockets of Democrats: tax-exempt 527 advocacy groups such as MoveOn.org, Americans Coming Together, and the Media Fund, which have sucked up $zillions from super-rich leftists like George Soros and Peter Lewis. So far in 2006, 17 of the top 25 contributors to 527s are funding liberal causes. A few more stats:
In 2004, 25 individuals gave over $2 million to 527s. Fifteen of them were Dems.
In 2002, donors who gave $1 million or more favored Democrats to Republicans by a 12:1 spending ratio: $36 million to $3 million. Of the top 10 individual contributors, only one gave to Republicans.
In 2000, 18 of the top 25 individual donors gave to Dems. To be the Party of the Rich, you need some very wealthy friends — like lawyers, who poured $182 million into politics in 2000, 75% of it to Dems; and Tinseltown, which gave 70% of its $32 million to the party of shoeless orphans like John Kerry, Herb Kohl, John Rockefeller, and Dianne Feinstein, all of whom are worth over $25 million. The only "Republican" Senator worth that much is Lincoln "Chafing" Chafee — a notorious RINO who many conservatives agree should be tarred, feathered, and run out of the party on a rail for his left-leaning voting habits.
The average GOP contribution is around $50. The Democratic Party won't release figures for its average contribution.
Bad enough that ultra rich liberals try to buy elections for likeminded candidates. Worse, these moneyed moonbats often attempt to buy offices for themselves. Ned "The Sped" Lamont has spent $4 million of his own money on his campaign for Senate in Connecticut. It cost John Corzine $60 million to become a Senator from New Jersey. Mark Dayton spent $12 million in Minnesota, Maria Cantwell $10 million in Washington, and Herb Kohl $5 million in Wisconsin. From 2000 to 2004, candidates who spent over $4 million of their own money were Democrats by a 3:1 margin.
Michael Barone refers to the limousine liberals who support the Democratic Party as the "trust-funder Left." They are people who either inherited their money, or found some other easy way to lay hold of it — e.g., through Hollywood, the Internet bubble, or George Soros' destructive currency speculation — rather than painstakingly acquiring wealth by creating it, like the "robber-baron" capitalists they so loudly despise.
As Schweizer notes, the ultra rich "have different priorities and concerns than other Americans." This may explain why the Democratic Party doesn't seem to have a coherent platform that it is willing to share with the unwashed masses.
