Money Talks

As an NBC-Marist poll shows the race between Mitt Romney and Barak Obama essentially dead heats in Iowa, Colorado, and Nevada, the spending by conservative super pacs continues to impact the campaign.

According to MSNBC pro Obama forces have spent $38.7 million and pro Romney spending stands at $46.7 million. However breaking it down further there is a glaring discrepancy in who is actually doling out all this cash. According to the report the Obama campaign is directly responsible for $31.4 million of their expenditures. On the other hand the Romney campaign has kicked in only $5.2 million. Everything else has come from right wing super pacs who are promising to spend as much as a billion dollars to unseat the president.

According to the supreme court this is free speech at work. To the average person it looks an awful lot like bribery, but then what do we know? You say tomato etc.

The only significant chunk of cash being spent in anti Romney, ads outside of the Obama campaign itself, comes from Planned Parenthood who has bought $1.2 million in ads. The ads will be appearing in Iowa, Florida, Wisconsin, and Washington D.C. They point out that Mr. Romney wants to gut the organization and roll back Roe V. Wade while he hems and haws about things like women earning the same amount of money as men for doing the same job. In other words, making America great again means getting into a time machine and traveling back to the 1950's. Yes, that was a lovely age. Racial segregation was wide spread, homosexuals were routinely beaten by just about everyone else and women were ordered by the state to carry their rapist's fetus to full term.

The figures do appear to show the Mitt has given up even trying to woo Hispanic voters, hoping instead they'll simply stay home on election day. So far his campaign has spent a whopping $21,000 on ads targeting the Latino population. In the mean time the Obama people have gone all in and have currently run up a tab of $1.4 million playing to that demographic. No wonder the republicans have all ready written off California. Look for every voter even suspected of being Hispanic to be challenged by republican poll watchers come November.

It is unclear as to how we got to this state. It has been a slow creeping process that probably began back when Eisenhower found out people actually watched TV ads. Then Jack Kennedy came along and he played to the camera perfectly, while Nixon came across as a jowly gangster, which, of course, he later proved he was. The television networks had found a new sales windfall and a  vast gaggle of media consultants and experts became eminently employable. And it all cost money. More than any single human being could hope to raise no matter how many improbable promises he made.

Add that to the right turn the republicans made first with Goldwater and then later with Reagan, you know that turn that led them to the path of you're with us, or you're a traitor and things went straight down hill. With the advent of Pacs and superpacs they could suddenly put their money where their mouths were. Their guy could remain above the fray while ads ran that said things like John Kerry didn't deserve his medals and Barak Obama was born somewhere in Africa, or Indonesia, well, anywhere but here. No depth was too great to sink to and no price too high to pay. Screw decency and the truth, we're talking about our boy running the country and keeping the barbarians at bay.

Yes, at some point democracy went by the way side and the oval office became available to the highest bidder.

Unfortunately for millions of Americans and perhaps the very future of the republic, the election of the president has come down to that crass and brutal golden rule.

"He who has the gold rules."

Hey, it isn't class warfare. Class warfare is a liberal myth. It is simply the cost of doing business. Besides, if you can't afford the car you shouldn't be in the showroom.

5-31-12