Billionaire Funds
Santorum Run; Call Koch Brothers A "National Treasure"
By Steve D. For Daily Kos Dairies
I for
one am delighted to have our elections decided by people with ungodly amounts
of wealth. That way I don't have to worry about which candidates are
successful and which are not. For example, now I know Rick Santorum, the
man who once claimed homosexuality would lead to man on dog sex is a serious contender for the GOP
nomination because the big money says he is.
A billionaire Wyoming
investor has pledged to give up to a half-million dollars in matching money to
an outside spending group that supports Rick Santorum for the GOP presidential
nomination.
Foster Friess put up a good chunk of the $537,000 that the
Santorum "super" PAC, the Red White and Blue Fund, spent on ads to
help the candidate come in a close second to Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses
earlier this month.
Now the 71-year-old Friess says he's sent a note to 5,000
"sportsmen" pledging to match whatever they donate to the super PAC,
up to $500,000, which could be crucial to Santorum's chances of halting
Romney's march to his party's presidential nomination. [...]
Friess made his fortune running mutual funds and is a keen stock
picker. He's a veteran supporter of conservative causes, a born-again Christian
and an ally of the much-richer Koch brothers, wealthy industrialists who
bankroll many conservative causes.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/...
Now
to you or me, tossing $1 MILLION dollars at a politician whose career was
recently deemed beyond salvageable by veteran politicos in his own party, might
seem a tad Quixotic. But that is just because we don't understand the new
dynamics of the pay to win the
electoral game like Mr. Friess does. Besides, what is $1
Million of negative attack ads to someone whose net worth exceeds that of the
average American by a factor of at least 10,000. Why to Mr. Friess, Wall
Street speculator extraodinaire, its no more than .01% of his stash. Less
than chump change.
Besides
Mr. Friess has lots of friends who think spending loads of money on
presidential campaigns is a worthy use of their money. After all, as the AP reported no other factor this year has
correlated better with primary success to date than spending by Superpacs.
In both Iowa and New Hampshire, the more money that was spent on a
candidate's behalf, the better that candidate did at the polls.
No
wonder Mr. Friess calls the Koch Brothers "a national treasure." The
Kochs have have spent millions on Republican, business and conservative causes,
as well as convincing their fellow members of the Billionaire Boys' and Girls'
Club to pony up the big bucks as well. Indeed, Mother Jones reports that the Koch brothers plan to
spend $200 MILLION of their own money this year on elections across the
country.
Too bad I have a conscience, otherwise I'd be more than happy to
organize a Super Pac to spend money however people in the wealthy stratosphere
like Mr. Friess and the Kochs would prefer. For a reasonable amount of
compensation, of course.
