Symptom of the Disease: Candidates for president spent $7 billion on 2012 election
As I have said before, this is now a full-blown, full time industrial complex that puts big dollar salaries into the hands of many people and is a huge financial boost for media and television.
Keep in mind these figures are exclusive to the presidential election and includes party and PAC dollars. Can you imagine what the figure would be if we included races for the Senate and House? From the Washington Times.
Candidates in the 2012 presidential election spent a record $7 billion during the race — a record-setting figure that surpassed all expectations, according to the Federal Election Commission.
FEC predictions were that election-related expenditures for 2012 would hit $6 billion, Politico reports.
To put $7 billion in perspective: It’s more than if every man, woman and child gave $1 to a campaign, Politico says.
All completely legal, but my point is the shift of power from the states to the federal government has created this monster. I bet you don’t like the idea of billions of dollars being spent to earn the votes of millions of people do you? Don’t like it? Move the power back to the states.
To put the $7 billion figure in perspective, plastic surgery was a $10 billion industry in 2011. The airport car rental and entire video game industry is estimated to be $10 billion.
The cost to insurance companies for Hurricane Sandy is estimated to be $10 billion.
This is a huge problem and a clear indication Washington, D.C. has collected too much power in a central location. Our Founding Fathers would not be pleased and mark my words, this will be the downfall of this great nation.
16 Comments
The website's content and articles were migrated to a new framework in October 2023. You may see [shortcodes in brackets] that do not make any sense. Please ignore that stuff. We may fix it at some point, but we do not have the time now.
You'll also note comments migrated over may have misplaced question marks and missing spaces. All comments were migrated, but trackbacks may not show.
The site is not broken.
The best candidates and elected officials that money can buy! Are you suggesting that an unvetted, unprincipled, posturing poser could be cast as a superlative candidate and win election.
What is the return policy?
Oh . . .
$7B out of our economy (although these are ?’investments’ to some, just without stock value).? So who is $7b lighter?? And what did they get for it???One must wonder if all of the influence buying cash was from within our borders.?
Sickening.
Mostly big corporations,banks,insurance companies,big Pharma & military suppliers.
The really hideous side of this figure is that most of this money goes to the liberal media, which uses it to abuse Republican candidates, and fattens their coffers for perpetuating that abuse between elections.
?
If there was an absolute cap on how much money a candidate for an office could spend, it might promote wiser application of the money, and make the campaigns more about the message than how many commercials they could flood the market with.? I also believe that every candidate should have all of their positions published in a booklet sent to all registered voters like they do for referendum questions in MA (sorry CT!).? In this, they would have the same questions, and a limited amount of space for an answer, and it would be effectively carved in stone.
?
Of course, this does nothing about the free campaigning done by so called “unbiased” journalists that report what they want, if they want, and with the spin they want, but it is a start.
Let’s see: liberals spend money buying media advertising. The media is beholding to who gives them the most money. Thus the media has a dollar-fueled bias towards liberals.
The best media the liberals could buy.
BTW, I’m so glad I was swayed by all of those anti-Romney commercials . . . killed the guy’s wife! Money in the Caymans, job-killer, two houses, elevators, no sense of humor, mean to the prezzy, do nothing wife with an expensive, fancy horse . . . oh! and that religion thingy. (SARC/)
“Caps”will never work what we must have is absolute”transparency” to know who’s giving to who. Tho it means nothing in Corrupticut(Chris Murphy) & the same may soon be true for the whole USA.
It’s an insane amount of money to be spent to influence a relatively small percentage of voters who swing the elections in the battleground states.
Well said, Sammy
Truly insane!
?
Corruptly so.
and that doesn’t even factor in the federal gravy that o instructed solis to spread around in the battleground states. . .
Seven Billion really isn’t that much. I want to know all I can about the man running,but also would like to know who is going to benefit from those donations & who’s making them.
I suppose most of the money goes to the liberal media, and I hate that. However, what I hate even more is the money that goes to the campaign spinners. Those smarmy demons who instruct candidates how to parse words (lie), how to discredit opponents by only repeating a partial quote (blame game)and teaching how to disarm opponents who try to discuss issues by perfecting phony outrage and hyperbole (waging war of no substance). The Clinton campaign spinners were great at this, but they were amateurs compared to the Obama campaign. Take the money out and we might have a campaign with a true discussion of the issues. Ok that will never happen, but I can dream can’t I.
Very well put.
Well said!
It was Obama who called the Clintons amateurs! Excellent!
My concern is that the Republicans, either through their self-destructiveness or citizen perception, are becoming moribund and thus ineffective and subsequently irrelevant. When that happens, we will effectively have a one-party system with a galaxy of shifting sub-factions. The Democrat machine will grind all challengers.
Romney came out of the campaign with an undeserved label of damaged goods. Clinton was “rehabilitated” by the media and is now an honored icon.
?
Symptom or root cause I wonder… and so much of that money goes into media that has shown itself to be anything but objective.? It is an insane amount of money as Sammy put it… almost as insane as labeling the system “representative” leaving alone the premise that it is the people that are being represented.
Because a majority of Americans get their information and entertainment from the idiot box. The entertainment talking heads, posting as journalist-experts, fill the time with sensational, just-in-news! — massaged and edited to fit the liberal narrative — lull the gullible citizens into consuming too many calories.
?
The National Pastime is now packing on a few pounds while vegetating in front of the boob tube.