The rich aristocrats are also members of the extremist right
by digby
Here are some very sobering numbers:
Fewer than four hundred families are responsible for almost half the money raised in the 2016 presidential campaign, a concentration of political donors that is unprecedented in the modern era.
The vast majority of the $388 million backing presidential candidates this year is being channeled to groups that can accept unlimited contributions in support of candidates from almost any source. The speed with which such “super PACs” can raise money — sometimes bringing in tens of millions of dollars from a few businesses or individuals in a matter of days — has allowed them to build enormous campaign war chests in a fraction of the time that it would take the candidates, who are restricted in how much they can accept from a single donor.
A New York Times analysis of Federal Election Commission reports and Internal Revenue Service records shows that the fund-raising arms race has made most of the presidential hopefuls deeply dependent on a small pool of the richest Americans. The concentration of donors is greatest on the Republican side, according to the Times analysis, where consultants and lawyers have pushed more aggressively to exploit the looser fund-raising rules that have fueled the rise of super PACs. Just 130 or so families and their businesses provided more than half the money raised through June by Republican candidates and their super PACs.
130 families out of more than 300 million people are financing the GOP campaigns so far.
I've been wondering why in the hell that nutball Ted Cruz was invited to the Koch-fest this week-end and I guess we now know the reason --- very, very wealthy people love this nutball:
I urge you to go and look at all the graphics of the donations. It's frightening. These hugely wealthy people are giving gigantic sums to Republican candidates. And not just any Republican candidates, true freakshow candidates like Ted Cruz.
We don't know how all this money is going to eventually affect races. It's possible that it reaches a saturation point and simply ends up turning a bunch of consultants into multi-millionaires. Maybe it's just their version of economic stimulus.
But if it does have a substantial effect, it seems to me quite dangerous that these extremely wealthy aristocrats are willing to write such big checks to these far right weirdos. They are no different than the big money guy who's actually running: Donald Trump. It shows they are extremists --- extremists who have been given even more power to do something crazy than they've ever had before.
When we talk about the far right base of the Republican party, it includes all these billionaires. They aren't "grown-ups". That should make us all very nervous.
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