Hullabaloo

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

 
St. John And The Big Money Boyz

by digby

Back in 2004, John McCain made a tepid complaint when the Swiftboat liars went after John Kerry. This time he's taking as much money from them as he can. in fact, they are giving big bucks to all the Republican campaigns. Well, except for one.

Christopher Hayes reports in The Nation:

Also noticeable among the recipients of Swift Boat largesse is one who received only a single donation: Mike Huckabee. Despite meager fundraising and little national name recognition, the former Arkansas governor has experienced a bubble-like expansion of support and media attention, taking the lead in Iowa and approaching a steady lead in national polls. But the lack of Swift Boat contributions lends credence to the claim that Huckabee is viewed warily by the money men who call the shots in the modern GOP. Despite proposing a radically regressive tax change and taking Grover Norquist's antitax pledge, he's been attacked savagely by the Club for Growth and eviscerated by columnist George Will for "comprehensive apostasy against core Republican beliefs," among them "free trade, low taxes, the essential legitimacy of America's corporate entities and the market system allocating wealth and opportunity."

This all supports the notion that the people behind the Swift Boat operation are chiefly concerned with the continued upward redistribution of wealth that is, more or less, the contemporary GOP's raison d'être. In 2006 Perry ponied up $5 million to start the Economic Freedom Fund, a 527 group devoted to attacking Democratic incumbents, and landed a large donation from prominent Swift Boat donor Carl Lindner. All of which is to say that the Swift Boaters aren't some kind of side show, a coterie of vicious mudslingers operating at the edges of respectability. They are the show. They are modern conservatism's core funders and beneficiaries. With conservatives staring straight into the abyss, their activities in this election cycle could very well make the Swift Boat smears look tame by comparison.

I'd bet money on it.

And I'd bet money that McCain is going to be the nominee too. It looks like Romney can't close the deal, Giuliani is a flake and the rest are just stooges. McCain's the only one who the Big Money Boyz can fall back on. They'll put up Lee Atwater's firewall in South Carolina (the same one that did him in in 2000.) In fact, it's already going up.



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digby 1/02/2008 01:33:00 PM |