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Pay to Play
Financing the Republican Campaign Message

-by Scott Rohter, October 2011

The third quarter figures are coming in, and Mitt Romney has raised over $32 million, almost as much as all of the other Republican candidates combined!  Rick Perry is next in line with $17 million, followed by Ron Paul with $12.5 million, then Herman Cain with $4.5 million, Jon Huntsman with $4.1 million ($2 million of which comes from his own personal fortune), Rick Santorum with $2 million, Newt Gingrich with $2 million, and Michele Bachmann with about $5 million.  The figures for Huntsman, Santorum, Gingrich, and Bachmann are all for the second quarter. They have not been updated to include the third quarter figures yet. 

So why are all of these numbers so important?  Because it demonstrates a candidate’s ability to pay for the precious TV and radio airtime, that is so essential to getting their commercials broadcast, and their Republican message out over the Democrat-controlled airwaves of our country!  Did you forget about that?  Most of the broadcast networks are owned and controlled by liberals, and most of these progressives support the Democratic Party!  But they are happy to take Republican money too! However it costs a lot to advertise, and broadcast your conservative message over these liberal networks!  And you have to Pay to Play.

All of the Republican candidates are busy doing fundraising for their campaigns.  It makes me just sick to think that they will have to spend most of the money they raise, with the liberal owned broadcasting networks, in order to get their Republican message out, over the Democrat-controlled air waves of our country.  You have to pay to play, but before they let you play, you first have to demonstrate to the media that you can raise the necessary money, in order to run with the big boys!  In other words, if you are a Republican candidate for office, you have to prove to the corporate executives at ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and FOX, that you really can pay to play, or they won’t pay any attention to you!  They won’t even mention your name on the network talk shows, or on the Sunday morning news shows if they don’t think you can raise the necessary money to buy the commercial ad time that is for sale! 

Michele Bachmann has not reported her campaign finances for the third quarter yet. Why do you think they are not mentioning her name anymore on the 6 o’clock evening news, or on the Sunday morning news shows?  Do you think that it might have something to do with the fact that she hasn’t reported her third quarter campaign finances yet, and her numbers might be down?  Why do you think that candidates for public office are required by law to disclose the results of their fundraising efforts?  Do we all just blithely assume that it’s so the average American can tell just how much money each candidate raises to run for public office?  And that it’s just for our sake that they have these reporting requirements! Give me a break! “Our elections have become a cash cow for the media!  Every two years in November, there is a vast transfer of wealth from candidates running for political office, to the media.  In their opinion it’s probably the only reason why we even need to have elections anymore…”  Through the third quarter of 2011, the total campaign fundraising efforts for all Republican Presidential candidates has already yielded $62.1 million for the media!   When you add in Barack Obama’s figures for the third quarter, you get $148.1 million!  And we are still over one year away from the general election!  There is still a lot more fundraising to be done, and a lot more money to be raised.  And this is just for the Presidential election!  There are 568 other elections going on for House and Senate seats all across the country!  That’s why I call elections a cash cow for the media!

I really don’t care how much money each candidate raises.  I’d much rather know about what each candidate believes, than to know how much money they have to spend in order to get elected!  But I’ll tell you who is mighty damn curious, and who really does care about how much money each candidate has raised.  The corporate executives of the major broadcasting networks, with whom the candidates will spend their money, care! They want to know exactly how much money each candidate has in their coffers, so they know who to talk up, and who to talk down, or who, just not to talk about at all, anymore.  Like Michele Bachmann!

We Republicans and conservatives need to find another way of getting our message out! We need to find another way to reach the masses of people who vote, besides the old method of buying commercial airtime, especially from ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC! Perhaps advertising on conservative or alternative websites that are not hostile to our converservative message would be a good idea.

"The truth, the political truth, and nothing but the political truth. A journalist has no better friend than the truth." - Scott Rohter
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