Much of the reporting on yesterday’s RNC finance leak focused on how the Republican Party is planning to exploit a fear of socialism to drive up donor dollars.
This is, in fact, disingenuous. The leak did not involve a strategic document, but rather an informal presentation, and a rather innocuous (if imprudent) one at that.
Instead, it suggests what we all know: that some GOP donors are driven by a fear of the President’s agenda. Another slide shows a comical cartoon of a man being held down by the globe, and jokes about Obama’s socialist agenda.
A third slide involves Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker Nancy Pelosi being compared to Scooby Doo and the villainess in One Hundred and One Dalmatians.
To underscore the point that The Daily Show is meant primarily for comedic value, Jon Stewart once told Tucker Carlson: “look, the show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls.” So it would be appropriate to note that right after the controversial cartoon slide is a snore-inducing presentation about how RNC members can log into their webmail.
The big story missed in the PowerPoint is how successful the GOP has been under the chairmanship of Michael Steele.
Without control of the White House, the House of Representatives or the Senate, the GOP has raised an off-year record $81 million dollars.
Another off-year record: 1.2 million active donors; among them 370,000 first time donors, estimated to mean $100 million over ten years.
Democrats, who control the White House, the House and the Senate, are nearly five million in the red, while the RNC remains without debt.
Chairman Michael Steele is no doubt irked by this ‘leak’, but undoubtedly is more irked by the lack of attention to the RNC’s fundraising successes.
At the RNC winter meeting in January, an obviously frustrated Steele responded to a reporter’s question about fundraising by saying:
I don’t know if you’ve noticed what happened this past year… we won two governorships, we won 26 out of 37 special elections. We bested the Democrats in six out of [the last] six months in fundraising.
And all of this occurred without any fundraising strategy that involves playing on fear. In fact, Steele’s best fundraising month so far – January 2010 – was generated by the genuine excitement of Scott Brown’s Massachusetts campaign.
There has emerged zero evidence that the RNC has an actual strategy that involves playing on fears. The real story here lies in a joke taken too seriously, and the untold successes of the RNC’s fundraising arm.
Add Tim Mak on twitter at: www.twitter.com/timkmak
teabag // Mar 4, 2010 at 4:24 pm
A puff piece for Steele. All we have to fear is fear itself LOL
franco 2 // Mar 4, 2010 at 4:32 pm
teabag = the paranoid left
Hot Air » Blog Archive » Video: Steele does damage control on RNC fundraising powerpoint // Mar 4, 2010 at 5:27 pm
[...] For a contrarian take defending the RNC, see … Frum Forum(?). [...]
rbottoms // Mar 4, 2010 at 8:05 pm
There is no spoon.
GOProud // Mar 4, 2010 at 9:56 pm
Tim hits one out of the ballpark: “There has emerged zero evidence that the RNC has an actual strategy that involves playing on fears. The real story here lies in a joke taken too seriously, and the untold successes of the RNC’s fundraising arm.”
Well, credit given where credit is due: good job, Tim. Welcome back to the GOP.
It was a joke no different than all the years we’ve listened to the farLeft and Democrats call Cheney “Darth Vader” or watched the bumper stickers on beat-up old Volvos and brake-challenged Prius’ with “Republicans for Voldemort”.
Michael Steele and the RNC know one thing: nothing sells like letting Obama be Obama and giving the microphones to Harry gReid and NancyBoTox.
agentprovocateur // Mar 4, 2010 at 11:22 pm
If this Powerpoint presentation is really no big deal, why are so many Republicans running away from it as fast as their legs can carry them? One would think they wouldn’t be doing so much to distance themselves from supposedly little “jokes”. Also, while touting the supposed “success” of Michael Steele, how do you explain these numbers? Oh well, I guess the fight to save the country from Socialism involves all kinds of weapons, including a little spin…
Si estos son los argumentos electorales del Partido Republicano, son pobres | Obamaworld // Mar 5, 2010 at 12:36 pm
[...] notas al pie. Desde el lado republicano, se defienden: la verdadera noticia es el aumento en donativos al Partido Republicano. Tienen probablemente razón [...]
GOProud // Mar 5, 2010 at 1:04 pm
“agentprovocateur” is it?
What is it about these Democrat lemmings who want to suddenly appear to be the spy’ish, undercover sleuthiness embodied in NancyP’s latest attempt to gut the CIA and our intel agents with a super-secret, dark of night, hidden ops, decoder rings on full power nonsense? Agentprovocateur? What a crock.
If you were the superspy you’re trying to role play, agentprovocateur, you’d know quickly why anyone reading anything written by Jeanne Cummings about GOPers should immediately recycle it in the circular bin… or take that poison dart before reading, at least.
Ms Cummings is one of the most notable partisan-slanted, Democrat hack journalists we’ve had littering the landscape of public opinion.
She started her career with a hacked series trying ever-so hard to link the Enron scandal to Bush 41’s Administration… and the GOP generally. She’s been a constant companion of the Democrat Left at NPR, MS/NBC, PBS and God only knows what other rat holes of partisan spin-mystering.
She even took the DNC paid job of “moderating” a special campaign debate between Hillary and BarrieO –before he became the Messiah– and the toughest question she asked? To wit, “The Free World and our allied alliance is crumbling under the go-it-alone diplomacy of the reckless Bush-Cheney Administration. We’ve angered muslims to the point that they’ve exported their grievances to American soil and terrorized the rest of the Free World. How would you reverse that?”
Good show, ol’ girl. That’s batting it out of the ballpark, what? Tough journalism there, princess.
Gosh, how could any GOPer not simply gush over Ms Cummings opinion piece? At her rate, she makes ChrisMatthews and AndreaMitchell look like real, unbiased journalists.
LauraNo // Mar 5, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Using false equivalences may feel like they help justify something but they don’t actually justify squat. Darth Vader talk and bumper stickers were not put forth by the official fund-raising arm of the official democratic party. Now were they?
I believe the real issue here being missed by the MSM is the fact that the RNC admitted they didn’t have the House, Senate or White House to sell as they usually would do.
TIM MAK: The Real RNC Powerpoint Story - Hip Hop Republican // Mar 5, 2010 at 7:37 pm
[...] Tim Mak the moderate conservative writer over at Frum Forum has done a great service in dispelling the myths about the media recent RNC story. Mak believes that the success of Steele is the real reason he and his staff are target. [...]
agentprovocateur // Mar 5, 2010 at 9:07 pm
re: GOProud // Mar 5, 2010 at 1:04 pm
Hmm…aren’t you just the cranky one. Are you always such an odious little person? For the record, I’m not trying to be anything, but your pathetic little attempt to use that to extend into some kind of club to beat up Nancy Pelosi is appreciated for the silly humor that it is. By the way, while you are so busy trashing Jeanne Cummings, can you legitimately dispute the information in her piece? Were those numbers simply made up, as part of the Socialist takeover of the country, perhaps?