I had some rare extra time this morning to reflect on Life, the Universe, and the Presidential election. After realizing how awful all the candidates from top to bottom are, I had wistful memories of one Newton Leroy Gingrich, Ph. D., and about
our lovely discussion here about him. So I went back to that thread, only to see that The Powers That Be deem it too old to be continued. (Who is running this place now, anyway?)
It turns out that Newton Leroy wanted to run this time around, but
he didn't think he could raise enough cash. (The going rate for a Presidential campaign is too much for Sheldon Adelson this time around). So now he is complaining about how we have an oligarchy now, because you need so much money now that you need the patronage of an Oligarch to be able to compete.
It's kind of ironic, because not too long ago,
Gingrich favored removing all limits on direct contributions to candidates by everyone, claiming that if candidates could accept unlimited amounts of money from everyone, the vast middle-class would rise up and start funding candidates in equal proportion to the much richer (but less numerous) upper class. So we now have a system that is very close to that, at least as far as super-PACs are concerned. And yet now he is complaining about Oligarchy and about current presidential candidates genuflecting before the Koch brothers to get support and money. (Perhaps if Newton Leroy's Ph. D. was in Math and not European History, he would have figured this out ahead of time.)
Which brings me to the Trump phenomenon. He doesn't have to go to the New Oligarchs to get funded, because he is one himself:
he can entirely self-fund his campaign without genuflecting to anyone but his own reflection. But I don't think anyone thinks Trump wants to be President -- he just wants to promote himself. And Trump knows how to say outrageous things to remain popular. His supporters trust him precisely because he doesn't have a politicians filter. Every time he says something outrageous they agree. Every time he says something outrageous, he saddles the GOP with more baggage to deal with in the General Election. And since his support seems to be a good chunk of GOP Primary voters, he will not be forced to go away until actual primaries start, and he finds that his support does not translate into delegates. What's his endgame? I think he will create a Trump News Channel, and outfox Fox News to become the ultimate political kingmaker. The only thing better than being President is being the Oligarch who the President knows he owes his office to. But that's for a different thread.
It's too bad that Newton Leroy is too poor to compete with The Donald this time around, because I would love to see him debate Trump. If Newton Leroy could go back in time and rethink his campaign finance position, I wonder if he would?
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