Will America Let Right-Wing Billionaires Buy the Election for Mitt Romney?

Who would rationally back Mitt Romney for President?

• One-percenters, who Romney will take care of through massive tax cuts.


• Severely conservative voters, who might like the fact that Mitt Romney was a "severely conservative" governor.


• People who believe that "marriage [can only be] between one man and one woman," and want a president who agrees with them.


• People who hate immigrants and want them all deported from the country.


• People who hate unions, or the rights of working people to band together and negotiate for fairer treatment and better wages and benefits.


• People who want to see health care policy decided by private insurance companies, regardless of the consequences to everyday Americans.


• People who would like to see us start a war with Iran.


• People who think Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States.

Is that a enough voters for Mitt Romney to win the election?  Not likely.

So what is the Republican playbook to make Mitt Romney competitive?  The answer is pretty simple. Thanks to the conservative majority on the Supreme Court and their 2010 Citizens United decision, rich right-wingers plan to pour more than a billion dollars through Super PACs in the hope that enough voters will be hoodwinked into voting against their interests, or staying home.

This article from Politico yesterday says "GOP groups plan record $1 billion blitz":

Republican super PACs and other outside groups shaped by a loose network of prominent conservatives - including Karl Rove, the Koch brothers and Tom Donohue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - plan to spend roughly $1 billion on November's elections for the White House and control of Congress, according to officials familiar with the groups' internal operations.

That total includes previously undisclosed plans for newly aggressive spending by the Koch brothers, who are steering funding to build sophisticated, county-by-county operations in key states. POLITICO has learned that Koch-related organizations plan to spend about $400 million ahead of the 2012 elections - twice what they had been expected to commit.

Just the spending linked to the Koch network is more than the $370 million that John McCain raised for his entire presidential campaign four years ago. And the $1 billion total surpasses the $750 million that Barack Obama, one of the most prolific fundraisers ever, collected for his 2008 campaign.

This money is in addition to the money Romney and the Republican Party will raise -- which is expected to be another $800 million.

Who is behind this onslaught of money?  Rolling Stone has an article in its current issue -- "Right-Wing Billionaires Behind Mitt Romney" -- that lists 15 backers and their interests.

• William Koch -- "The Coke Dealer":  Wants to pollute for free.


• Harold Simmons -- "The Waste Baron": Wants to store radioactive waste in Texas.


• Bob Perry -- "The McMansoineer":  Wants "tort reform."


• Jim Davis -- "Mr. Fair and Newbalanced":  Wants a lucrative defense contract.


• Richard and Bill Marriott Jr.: "The Hotel Tycoons."  Wants taxpayers to subsidize luxury travel.


• Edward Conrad -- "The Bain Buddy":  Wants to screw taxpayers by keeping his hedge fund income loophole.


• Frank Vandersloot -- "The Pyramid Schemer": Wants fewer consumer protections.


• Steve Lund -- "The Olympic Partner":  Wants to protect false advertising and marketing scams.


• Julian Robertson Jr. -- "The Tax Dodger":  Wants unfairly low taxes.


• John Paulson -- "Goldman's Sugar Daddy":  Wants feds to back off regulating Wall Street.


• Paul Singer -- "The Vulture Capitalist":  Wants U.S. government backing for his $2 billion lawsuit against Argentina.


• Bob Mercer -- "The Quant Master":  Wants to block any tax on stock transactions.


• Kenneth Griffin -- "The King of Chicago":  Wants to end Dodd-Frank.


• L. Francis Rooney III -- "The Ambassador": Wants more building contracts and patronage.


• Steven Webster -- "Dr. Drill":  Wants to drill, baby, drill.

We also know that Karl Rove controls American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, which intend to raise and spend over $300 million.  Restore our Future, run by Romney cronies, spent more than $46 million in the primaries, almost all of it in attack ads in support of Mitt Romney. They can be expected to raise much more for the general election. Other players expected to spend $100 million or more include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  The Politico article lists others.

Unfortunately, media onslaughts often work. How else to explain that 70 percent of Americans once thought Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11?

Let's hope they don't work this time.

 

Follow Brian J. Siebel on Twitter: www.twitter.com/opposemitt

Comments

[BrianStevens82]

09:25 PM on 05/31/2012

If you cannot stand Romney OR Obama (maby because the same corperate CEOs are pulling their strings). Please consider getting behind Ron Paul's R3VOLution movement. It's not just about nominating RP for president. It's about taking this country back from the corrupt.

[Eagleman]

09:11 PM on 05/31/2012

You are right

Let the left wing billionaires like Soros buy the election...

[JohnBrewerLV]

07:47 PM on 05/31/2012

The poor Obama only has Goldman Sachs and Monsanto. woe is he!!

[ashcom]

07:14 PM on 05/31/2012

Great blog article. In a nutshell. You really have to wonder what motivates people to vote Republican in today's political environment. There was a time when I was proud to be a Republican. A liberal Republican. That makes me a socialist in the eyes of the fiery-eyed tea party conservatives. Liberal Republicans were way far to the right of conservative Democrats. The world has gone askew.

[logical person]

06:37 PM on 05/31/2012

People who will vote for Romney?

People who would like to see America prosper and the deficit reduced.

People who do not want to see America drop its credit rating yet again as it has under Obama and see the dollar value completely disintegrate.

People who would like a job.

People who love America and do not want to see it dismantled by someone who doesn't love it.

It's not going to be easy to clean up the mess started by Clinton and Bush and GREATLY intensified by Obama, despite all his claims of "change." He didn't specify what change he intended exacty, did he?

People who would like to see their president be proud of his country and not bow to Islam leaders or praise the Islam faith over Christianity. I heard him say in an interview that he is a Muslim and the interviewer corrected him. This guy has motives that no other president, to my knowledge, has every had. No matter if they were good or bad Presidents, former presidents at least seemed to be pro-American. The Obama we saw speaking at the Viet Nam Memorium on Memorial Day was the "campaign Obama" who says everything we want to hear. Now if all of that was true, I would be 100% pro-Obama, but it isn't - he is just in campaign mode again, telling us what we wish he felt.

[hopefull]

04:59 PM on 05/31/2012

Big business gave us Obama (to sooth the voters,after the Bush debacle).The experiment continues,the next president is Romney and total control by business.

[olsonp]

04:35 PM on 05/31/2012

Of course, one can also ask the following questions?

Who will vote for Obama?
Those who reveive more from the government as entitlements than they pay in
Those who believe he government owes hem a living
Those that think housing. food, alcohol, transportation, sex, etc is a guaranteed right and should be paid for by those that have wealt, not themselves.
Those that would rather spend their money on cellphones, beer, movies, large screen TVs, etc than save.

[ashcom]

07:16 PM on 05/31/2012

people who can spell.

[earachefl]

07:17 PM on 05/31/2012

Gee, Olson, guess what? I'm a college-educated, employed, upper-middle-class guy who doesn't fall into any of your neat little boxes. And guess what? I'm voting for Obama over that rich, entitled, out-of-touch tool who wants to bring his own taxes down even more from the ridiculously low levels that they're currently at.