An Early Sign To Watch For That Things Aren’t Going Well For The GOP

Cast your minds back four short years. In 2020 incumbent President Donald Trump was running for reelection by RNC fiat. It’s not like there wasn’t a primary field waiting out there, but since Ronna Romney McDaniel’s tummy needed a skritch, she pulled the plug on the GOP primaries to keep his Lowness from having to get into a WWE cage match to get the nomination. Meanwhile the Democrats were hosting a primary field just slightly smaller than the Indianapolis phone book.

As the Democrats were campaigning, and having debates leading up to the primaries, you started seeing all kinds of poorly made, disjointed Trump ads on television. They were full of gaudy snippets of Trump pretending to be presidential, and accompanied by bushels of bullsh*t proclamations of accomplishments Trump hadn’t made. This was sound politics. Get out there and define your message before the other side can.

Now come on back to today. It’s alright, it’s sunny and warm. Right now it’s the GOP that has a Godsmack mosh pit primary going, but when you look at it, it’s a PINO, a Primary In Name Only. Trump is sitting at 55% support and his closes competitor, Flop Gov Ron Pissantis is at 13%. And here are the Democrat’s, busy running a nationwide $25 million ad campaign, blasting out Biden’s accomplishments, and setting the narrative before the GOP can do it.

Question. Where is Trump? Sweet Jesus, he’s got a nipple lock on the GOP small donor base, he’s practically minting the stuff. And if you want to nitpick, Biden actually has a primary opponent, RFK Jr., who is copping a mope for not getting a Secret Service detail with a whopping 9% base. But it’s still going to be a Trump v Biden matchup. Why isn’t he getting his message out there, jazz up the base to close out the primaries early. Especially since I can tell you that the Democratic Super PAC ads hammering Trump aren’t far behind.

I think I know the answer to that one. Trump is going broke. He may be raking it in, but in his campaign’s last disclosure, $0.40 of each donation dollar is going to pay Trump’s profligate legal fees. And it’s only going to get worse. And while most GOP candidates and incumbents are having trouble rubbing two nickels together since Traitor Tot is taking it all, even the RNC is starving, since the deep pocket donors won’t give, knowing that El Pendejo Presidente will end up with it. They’re targeting specific races to direct donate to instead.

Which brings me to the point. I have written for a couple of cycles now about a strange phenomena I’ve noticed. Living in the critical county of a swing state, Clark County, Nevada, we start getting our political ads pretty early out here. Like the day after the previous election results are announced. And in the 2018 and 2020 cycles, I wrote that something weird was going on. Democratic incumbents, who were running unopposed were putting out puff pieces listing their accomplishments in congress. And Democratic challengers for GOP seats were putting out puff pieces introducing themselves to voters and asking for votes. But from the GOP side, both incumbent as well as challengers, they were radio silent. You couldn’t even find signs for them on bus stops.

Two perfect examples. In 2016, when Democrat Katherine Cortez Masto ran against GOP incumbent Dean Heller, she was very well funded. She spent millions on puff pieces showing her record in state government, and outlining her positions. On the other hand, her Super PAC was hammering Heller as a Trump butt-boy, and corrupt to boot. As I wrote at the time, Heller was airwave silent. The only Heller ads that ran were attack ads from aligned Super PAC’s. Trump was not popular in Nevada, and he hoarded his campaign cash rather than be competitive.

In 2022, in Clark County the Democratic incumbent was Susie Lee. The frontrunner in the GOP primary was a far right, anti abortion wingnut named April Becker. During the GOP primaries, Lee spent heavily on puff pieces touting her accomplishments, while her aligned Super PAC carpet bombed Becker as an anti abortion extremist. As far as I know, Becker put out one puff piece introducing herself to voters, which had an extremely limited air time on cable. Becker got blown out.

There’s the indicator to watch for as the holidays roll around, and it gets closer to the primaries. And I don’t mean national advertising, I’m talking about just looking out for advertising on your networks for local candidates and incumbents. Because I have a strong feeling that a lot of you are going to see what I’ve seen for the last three cycles here in Nevada.

I wrote previously a couple of months ago that as a part of the Trump/Bannon desire to demolish democracy, the first thing Bannon started squealing for on his pigcast was for the faithful to take over local and state GOP party organs. Which they did in several states. And as a result, several critical swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Arizona and Georgia have the state GOP parties either filing for bankruptcy, or on the brink of doing so.

In Michigan, they were reduced to bringing in AZ Gubernatorial loser Kari Lake to give a series of speeches to raise money. In Minnesota, for the $70 price of an X-Box One game you can take over the entity of the state GOP. Assuming of course that you also want to take over the $9000 of debt they’ve piled up. And in Arizona, they’re running the kind of deficit that has them supposedly cutting back on paychecks for paid staff.

This could be the hidden cancer for the GOP writ large going into 2024. The way a normal political organization works is that the national organization fundraises the monster bucks. State organs hold BBQ’s, golf days, and auctions to raise cash. Candidates raise cash. The RNC spreads the cash around to state parties, and supports competitive candidates in trouble with cash and ground resources. That’s working like a champ for the Democrats right now. They’re fundraising, spending $25 million on pro Biden advertising, and DNC Chair Jaime Harrison has instituted Howard Dean’s structured 50 state strategy to support pickup opportunities in every state. You wanna know how effective that can be? Think Virginia in 2017.

Meanwhile the RNC is cash starved, the big money boys are spreading it around to their pet races, nobody can raise a dime while The Cheeto Prophet is sucking it all up, the local state parties are on hunger strike, and the RNC doesn’t even have a crust of moldy bread to send them. And by the looks of it, even the Dollar Loan Center will give them the Denver boot out the door.

Here’s why this is so critical. Put the presidential race out of your mind for a minute, there’s also the Senate and House to worry about. In the Blue Tsunami of 2018 the Democrats were successful because grassroots candidates did grassroots fundraising, and refused corporate donations. And outspent entrenched GOP incumbents by three or four to one. Cash may no longer be king where advertising is concerned anymore in the digital age, but on a local level, it’s critical for local advertising, holding rallies, phone banking, and door knocking. The Democratic candidates are going to have all of these things. And what will the GOP have to counter that with at the local level? I said it before, and I’ll say it once again, going into the holidays, start watching for a possible wave of vulnerable GOP incumbents bailing out and retiring rather than running for reelection. They can all read polls, but they an all read bank statements too. Don’t touch that dial.