I’d love to get money out of politics. Make political advertising illegal. Give candidates a web site to post their resume. That’s it. No more tv, radio, magazine, web, or newspaper campaign ads.
This shit is obscene.
A two month campaign season would help. Political donations may only occur between Labor Day and Election Day. No donations, fundraisers, or campaigning may occur before or after those dates.
As long as we’re making a wishlist, I’ll also take a spending max for the main campaign combined with any supporting PAC (i.e. no shell PACs pretending to be regular citizens supporting a candidate on their own dime). No more billionaire bankrolling to simply outspend the average person.
I would like public funding of elections and a dragon
What color dragon do you want?
The trouble with a time-limted campaign is that it’s a big country, and politics are local. You’d basically hamstring every candidate who does not have a national profile.
Nationally funded campaigns are the best path to getting money out of politics. Money isn’t speech, and donations to candidates should be entirely illegal. If anyone wants to run issue ads, that’s fine, make your case to the American public and disclose the source of the funds. But endorsing a specific candidate is quid pro quo bribery.
Each state funds its own events, and qualifying candidates get a stipend for travel and lodging. No staff, no speech writers, just the candidates and their ideas. Show up, make your case, move on to the next state. 50 debates would cost a tiny fraction of what we spend now, and it would be our money buying it.
There are a thousand kinks in our electoral process, from balloting to gerrymandering to disenfranchisement, but none of it gets fixed while the process is inherently corrupted by legal bribery.
Campaigns for public office should be limited to evenly distributed funds to all candidates with routine audits and disbursement windows to start the campaign season at the right time and prevent electoral burnout. This would also remove corporate backers like oil and military weapons for paying to win an election by burying their opponents through outspending.
Anytime a democracy let’s money decide who speaks, it let’s the richest say what they want while everyone else has to listen. A democracy which treats each candidate the same is the one which elects the best leaders.
The issue I could see with this is that political groups would have a very strong incentive to get around this and would try to push the limits of it. For example, if advertising about specific candidates is made illegal, groups might make ads promoting or attacking certain political positions instead, as a proxy for the candidates. If you make political advertising for anything illegal, even if not mentioning a specific candidate, then it would get even more thorny, because almost anything can be a political issue. For example, some right-wing political group might try to claim that gay marriage is a political issue and that any depiction of it in media is therefore advertising a stance on it, and sue anyone showing such on those grounds to try to silence people they don’t like.
Finally, political groups might just buy ads using organizations based outside the country, or use the advertising money instead on hiring people to go on social media and shill for their preferred candidates or positions, having the same effect as advertising without actually running ads.
Outlaw fundraising, give every candidate that can get enough signatures $20,000 to run for office, let them compete on ideas, give each candidate the same amount of air time on TV. I think Japan does something like this.
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$10M to get to second place in a winner take all contest? This is the kind of brain we need running the country. /s
This is perhaps the first contest where the winner may be in prison and may not be able to legally or politically “win”.
Winner is also 77, unhealthy, and going through a very stressful period of his life. Probably a decent chance of him dying of a heart attack or something.
Stop. I can only get so erect
His sister just died.
For anyone else that would be a stressor but he’s never cared about anyone but himself
If that happens, I imagine within 30 seconds of the news being released. We’re going to get soo many conspiracy theories about it. With those those conspiracy theories, there’s going to be problems for everyone else.
10m at a chance to win by default basically.
If someone had this tenacity 8 years ago… But this time it actually almost makes sense to try to bank on him failing out. But then again, he survives it all, always so
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The only way any of them still make any sense running is if they assume that Trump is going to be dead or in prison by next year.
Vivek’s entire brown-nosing campaign is just a VP audition.
Conservatives in a nutshell
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Nah, it’s because she’s running for VP. She’s been doing it all along. Same as everyone else that’s been on the GOP debate stage except for Christie and Pence.
Nah, a few of them are just in it to make some money. Get a book deal, get speaking engagements, regular on Fox, or straight up pocketing cash.
That, or the leftover candidate to take the baton should the tangerine tyrant be otherwise unavailable to run for office.
If that is your theory, DeSantis should be included in the except section, right?
Not saying you’re wrong, but surely DeSantis is aiming to be VP to trump.
When I said everyone except Christie and Pence I meant everyone except Christie and Pence.
Stop trying to make Nikki Haley happen. She’s not gonna happen.
She’s better than the other chucklefucks on the Republican debate stages.
Would you really rather Trump or DeSantis if it was inevitable that a Republican wins the presidency?
Plus, if she gets the Republican nomination, it’s very likely Biden becomes a shoe-in because Trump would either be disqualified or running as an independent (which would really split Republican voters).
If it’s inevitable, sure. But it’s by far not inevitable. I’d rather take my chances against Trump, because Biden has already shown able to beat him and Trump would rally the democratic base to vote more than if Haley were running. If republicans have realized this, they’re smart to swap their focus to a new nominee.
She will be the VP or front runner depending on if Trump goes to jail.
Repubs won’t vote a woman in to the White House. Especially if she’s currently trailing DeSantis who has become a joke candidate.
They do not have a legitimate contender outside of Trump. Which is ridiculous considering who the opponent will be.
Trump wants a loyal disruptor who is willing to go on the attack with nonsense. Haley has demonstrated all of those qualities, and she can mollify conservative women who feel icky voting for Trump. She is the best choice for VP out of the candidates still in the race. He’s not going to pick Meatball or anyone who has directly criticized him. Every critism she’s leveled at the former president has been wrapped in compliments, so he’ll smugly claim victory when she joins him at the podium.
And if Trump bows out, is ruled out by the courts, or is otherwise unavailable, his supporters aren’t going to back DeSantis or Christie. She wins the bigotry ladder competition with Ramaswamy, and she’ll say whatever she needs to say to convince conservatives that she will be their woman in the White House. Trumpers will slide over to her camp and say “see, we’re not the misogynists, you are!”
She’s far too sane for Trump to even consider. The only way Trump doesn’t get a sycophant that’s dumber than 3 dollar bill is if the GOP makes him take someone from the party. And they can’t even get him to show up to a debate so they’re getting whoever the next My Pillow guy is as the VP nomination.
Haley is the consummate pragmatist, and as long as Trump is controlling the base, she will continue to be a Trump sycophant. She doesn’t have a single opinion that isn’t based on a poll, and Trump still polls well.
He won’t show up for the debates because he doesn’t have anything to gain, and has everything to lose. If he stands up next to people making coherent arguments (I’ll disagree on the “sane” bit, but that’s not the point), then he will bolster them at his own expense. His followers won’t watch the debates if he’s not there, and the people watching don’t get to see him fumble the ball.
He also doesn’t have the time or money to prep for the debates anyway.
Yeah I think it’s between her, ramaswamy, and trump making the decision that running in the primaries against him was a show of bad faith that disqualifies you.
I think Vivek would need to change his name before most of the Republican base would be willing to pull a lever next to his name. Like “Nikki” did.
I actually don’t. The Ramaswamy next to it is still gonna say it. There’s gonna be the people who think America is only for white people, they know who they’re voting for. The name change is more effective for the low information voter and with someone who could pass for white in certain circumstances.
What you’ve got with him is an Indian businessman who is very loudly Hindu in ways that sound just like Christianity (very clearly playing the same game that Shapiro et Al do with their Judaism). And the Hinduism is what I think might be what stops him. He’ll get some of the Christian right, but not enough.
What I think he really has going for him though is everyone else is trying to be trump but with control and follow through or trump but without the baggage or something similar. Vivek, Vivek is trying to out crazy trump. “Y’all loved the wall idea, so fuck you two walls. I’m going to build a second wall to keep the Canadians out too.” That’s fucking insane, but so is trump. If he can make them feel like he understands them and can rile them up right then it might go as well as a rich New Yorker yelling about coastal elites and pretending to shovel coal.
A lot of money to finish in second place.
They’re chasing the VP position.
In the race to be the next person 40 points behind Trump? 🤔
The GOP base is way too racist AND sexist to ever make her the nominee.
Imagine spending $10,000,000 of someone else’s money to maybe win a distant second place in the Republican Primary against a guy who can only be described as a meatball on stilts.
Imagine donating $10,000,000 to someone to maybe win a distant second place in the Republican Primary against a guy who can only be described as Meatwad on stilts.
More proof we should tax the rich into penury
Why do you have to insult Meatwad like that?
Meatwad is funny and cute. Trump is neither. If Trump is like any of the ATHF he’s Shake.
I was actually talking about DeSantis, but you’re 100% right and I have defamed Meatwad’s character.
“Dancing is forbidden!” - DJT
Nimarata Nikki Randhawa isn’t going anywhere. A woman, one off from an immigrant won’t even have solid MAGA support, assuming the lead insurrectionist is doing time.
Imagine using that $10 million to idk, help people?
🤷♂️
Nope, lemme stroke my ego and plaster my face on TV and Pop-up ads
lol. Trump’s her daddy. She just can’t accept it.
I think a lot of people lack imagination about what can happen between now and the primaries/general. Trump could be found guilty for numerous crimes. He could go to jail. He could lose his money and properties in that civil trial. He is also an old man that could get dementia, be diagnosed with cancer, or suddenly die of natural causes. If he is suddenly out of the running, being second is very valuable.
“But for most of those events, people will support him anyways!” Maybe. This is all unprecedented. I don’t know where people get their level of certainty from.
You act like they wouldn’t vote for his corpse
I think you misunderstand me. I am not “acting like” anything is certain. I am explicitly endorsing uncertainty. One of the things I fucking hate about the internet is all the insane confidence, and groupthink around that confidence. If it later turns out he loses, a bunch of people will come out and say, “I always thought that. I don’t think anyone thought he would win from jail.” and I’ll want to scratch out my eyes.
Some definitely will never abandon him. He has a high floor. But he needs support from more than his rabid base to dominate the primaries like he has. Will moderate suburban Republicans also support him from jail? If you’re confident about predicting that, the prediction is based on no historical data because it’s unprecedented.
I am absolutely confident that no sequence of events could cost Trump the republican nomination. Infirmity, imprisonment, penury? Irrelevant.
The general is less predictable. But the republican primary-voting base is locked in for Trump until death.
Yeah it would one thing if she were actually throwing her own money into the gutter just to overtake the turd in front, but it doesn’t come out of her pockets. And frankly I’m not sure which is the bigger turd, her or Ron De-Shithead. They definitely do have other people’s money to use to turn this nation into a happy little sewer for bigots like themselves.
Ron is the bigger shithead. I wouldn’t like it but I could probably stomach Haley being president. However, for that reason, Haley will also never win the GOP primary.
I’d probably sooner have her than him, only because she’s female and might possibly have a shred or kernel of compassion within her somewhere. Ron just seems out to hurt people and take money from groups who support that kind of cruelty.
That’s a lot to pay to try and pick up Tim Scott’s 15 supporters and Pence’s seven.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign will reserve $10m in television, radio and digital advertising across Iowa and New Hampshire beginning in the first week of December, a massive investment designed to give the former UN ambassador an advantage over the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, at a critical moment in the GOP nomination fight.
DeSantis stands as Haley’s strongest competition for her party’s second-place slot, although the Florida governor’s campaign has shown signs of financial strain after a tumultuous summer.
Rival campaigns are betting that if they can emerge as the main alternative to Trump, they can consolidate enough support to mount a strong challenge against him or replace him if he falters.
Trump faces four criminal indictments, including a case focusing on his efforts to overturn his 2020 general election defeat in Georgia and another on felony charges for working to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the violent January 6 2021 riot by his supporters at the US Capitol.
The South Carolina senator Tim Scott, whose allied Super Pac had booked $7.5m in ads through Iowa’s 15 January caucuses, dropped out of the race late on Sunday.
“The same can’t be said for Ron DeSantis, who, even with a decent showing in Iowa, can’t afford a cup of coffee at the Red Arrow diner in New Hampshire and is a mere tourist in South Carolina.”
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