The GOP’s 2022 Money Woes. A Deeper Dive

God, I am so loving being able to write about anything other than Donald Trump, although for the most part, he still manages to weave his way through most things, like DNA strands in a blood sample.

For more than a half a century the Republican party has made a living by being the business friendly party. They were pro growth, pro free trade, anti tax, anti government regulation. In other words, they were pretty much pro anything that brought those big, fat corporate donations into their coffers. And  it worked. Every damn cycle, especially national elections, the GOP would hold a huge fundraising advantage.

But over the last several years, there have been warning signs popping up all over the place, like toadstools in a dark, damp part of the yard. I’ll start with the largest one first, and then work my way down.

For that last half a century, the GOP was laser focused on doing nothing that would embarrass their big business overlords. Sure, the GOP was racist, it was sexist, it was far right evangelical, it was anti gay and anti immigrant, but it went to great lengths to keep all of that shit in the closet. Dog whistles and winks was the coin of the realm.

But all of that changed on the day that Donald Trump accepted the GOP nomination. Hell, he took out full page ads in the New York Times, and billboards in Times Square to advertise his sickness. And put big business in the meat grinder.

The world has become a different place. America is more tolerant and inclusive, everything from women’s rights to gay rights, to civil rights to immigration rights. And the country has become more socially and media savvy, which has forced big business to become more socially aware and conscious. And Trump is a problem.

That is the GOP’s biggest danger going into 2022. Some people are calling what is going on right now in the GOP as a civil war, I prefer to look at it as the death throes of a party. Trumpism has won. And The Lincoln Project has made it clear that they will publicly pillory any company that donates to the RNC or Trump friendly candidates. And companies are listening.

But it gets even worse. Because the monolithic, single, big dollar donor class of the GOP is in disarray. Cast your mind back as far as you like. Just pick a campaign. How many times in that campaign, in the GOP’s darkest hours, did a single source, uber rich shitpoke suddenly pop up and write a multi million dollar check to save the day?

Sheldon Adelson is dead, he was buried in Jerusalem a few weeks ago. David Koch is gone as well, and his brother Charles has publicly expressed regret for some of the gruesome twosome’s previous tactics, such as astroturfing the rise of the Tea Party thinking mistakenly that they could control them. Elliott Broidy is a disgraced, self admitted  federal felon, and Vegas mogul Steve Wynn is in exile after being ousted from his own company in a sexual harassment scandal. Remember hearing any of them cutting a multi million dollar check in 2020?

But worst of all for the GOP is that, coming in 2022, they are going to suffer death by a thousand cuts. The Lincoln Project is by far and away the most influential media advertising operation I have ever seen. And I am so glad that they’re not working against us. And they’re not going anywhere.

But it’s not just them. There is another group that just popped up called Republicans For Accountability. They just took out a 1 million ad buy to put up billboards in the states and districts of 12 GOP Senators and Representatives that they feel were personally responsible for the Capitol assault with their lies, calling for them to resign. Nice thing about bill boards, they ain’t expensive. Those things can stay up for months, if not years.

And how about Republican Women For Accountability They’re about to go up with a targeted market ad buy against some if not all of the same miscreants. And Bill Kristol is busy causing trouble of his own.

See, here’s the thing. These people aren’t doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, and they’re not doing it on the hoof. They’re busy fundraising. And they’re getting all of the money that they need to not only get up and running, but to stay up and running. That money has to come from somewhere. And where it’s coming from is traditional  conservatives, who under normal times, would be putting that money into the coffers of the RNC and individual candidates.

I ain’t just making this shit up. You don’t even have to research, just watch the news. The GOP has become the party of Trump, which makes them toxic to the very corporate America that they have relied on for decades for their lifeline. And in the meantime, what passed for their traditionally GOP grassroots fundraising is going to organizations dedicated to bring the current GOP down. Don’t touch that dial.