"Who Will Win Elections? Simple: The Most $$$"

Mon. June 4, 2012:

Gentle Readers, today's amount is long-ish, but if it convinces you how crucial Money [and well-paid shrewdness in political strategists] is, then by the end you will sense that right now Republicans are eating Democrats' lunch.

An outstanding political advisor friend, based in Maine, gave me an elegantly simple prediction:
Whoever collects the most money wins -- it's as plain as that.
He said it applied not only to Scott Brown's reelection bid for U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts, and to Obama's 2012 reelection campaign.  It applied to all political campaigns throughout the USA across the ages.

By this measure, 2012 is going to be a very bad year for Democrats -- at the national & state levels.

Tomorrow, June 5, could be the first indicator.  In Wisconsin, Republican governor Scott Walker will likely outspend his way to victory in a special recall election, or so say the latest polls.  Given his divisive, in-your-face, polarizing approach to issues like collective bargaining, you'd think he would be easy prey for those Wisconsin multitudes who rose up against his bullying state-house tactics this past winter.
But no:  Unlimited funds from out of state -- most notoriously from the Koch brothers -- have swamped Democrats' rare recall effort.  This, despite angry cries of foul from MSNBC, from Bill Clinton's recent speech in Wisconsin, from public & private labor unions, from university folks in Madison, among many many others.

Superior money appears to be translating into superior campaign operatives, too.
Newspapers over the last week run item after item, suggesting that Republican strategists are outmaneuvering their Democratic [oops:  in GOP-speak, "Democrat"] counterparts in big ways & little, in national & state nooks & crannies:
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1.  The archetypal Republican successful maneuver is in Massachusetts:  

Just one planted Boston Herald story about Elizabeth Warren's 1/32 Native-American ancestry claim has completely undermined her effort to reclaim Ted Kennedy's Senate seat from Republican Scott Brown.  No other issue has any room for air.  Warren will go down to defeat, if she doesn't overcome this clever well-paid Republican sabotage.

2.  Obama strategist David Axelrod planned an attack on Romney's gubernatorial record in front of the Massachusetts State House.  But when he arrived, Axelrod's staged crowd was heckled & upstaged by a Romney campaign crowd twice its size.  Romney's Boston headquarters had discovered the Axelrod visit by an inadvertent mention on Twitter.  

Meanwhile, in California, the Romney campaign, swimming in superior funding, kept secret until the last minute Romney's appearance in front of Solyndra, an embarrasingly failed solar company that got millions in federal loan guarantees under Obama.

NYT of Fri. June 1:  "Mr. Romney's campaign required reporters to gather at a distant parking lot to board a bus for an undisclosed location, suggesting ominously that Mr. Obama's administration might have tried to stop the event."

3.  In the House of Representatives, Republicans deliberately brought up a bogus bill punishing any Mom [or her doctor] seeking an abortion for purposes of gender-selection -- a virtually nonexistent happenstance.

NYT, Fri. June 1:  "Republicans did not anticipate that the legislation would pass, but saw it as an opportunity to force Democrats to vote on an issue with appeal among conservatives."

4.   Supposedly "liberal" NYT columnists Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg marvel at how "resilient" the Romney campaign has proven, recovering quickly from the bashings he took during Republican primaries.  Even Bill Richardson, the New Mexico Clinton Democrat, called the Romney "rapid-response" operation "very, very impressive."

5.  You'd think that, especially after JPMorgan's recent $3 billion missteps, federal regulators would finally have the upper hand, to rein in Wall Street's giant banks.
But no:  Check out the NYT story of Dennis M. Kelleher, a tireless crusader for "integrity in finance."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/31/business/kelleher-leads-a-nonprofit-better-markets-in-fight-for-stricter-banking-rules.html?pagewanted=all

Kelleher's efforts to educate Congressional members about the need for effective banking regulations get swamped by armies of Big Bank lobbyists.  "It's a battle in which the Wall Street lobbying and public-relations machine will have a decisive advantage," said a former Delaware senator.  "With the regulators, you don't have to win.  You just have to gum them up.  And that is exactly what Wall Street has done."

6.  Somehow -- twice this week -- Republicans have succeeded in embarrassing the Obama White House by forcing troublesome leaks about the President's overreach.
The first told of Obama's personal role in "baseball card" & "secret list" targeting terrorists for drone attacks in Pakistan & Yemen.
The second told of Obama personally ordering Cyberattacks against Iran.

7.  Obama's litigators keep losing case after case against bad guys:  They failed against John Edwards; they will likely fail against Roger Clemens; they will almost certainly lose in the Supremes on health care.  See "Another High-Profile Failure for a Justice Dept. Watchdog":
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/us/edwards-case-a-blow-to-justice-dept-corruption-unit.html

8.  John Boehner is personally barnstorming Iowa on behalf of Republican congressional candidate Tom Latham for a toss-up open Iowa seat in the House: the popular Democrat, Leonard Boswell, is falling behind, because national Democrats can't match Boehner's cameo visit OR fund-raising.

9.  In Florida, Republican leaders have deviously, quietly, pushed "onerous" requirements on voter registration, to scrub likely Democratic voters from the rolls.  One victim was a 91-year-old war veteran who had been a legitimate citizen for years.

Bill Internicola, 91-year-old Florida war vet