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July 28th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
Mr Romney added a further $2 million to his coffers at a $75,000-a-head dinner
for affluent US expatriates, held at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on
Thursday.
But the funds raised in Britain are nothing compared with contribution from
donors like Sheldon Adelson, one of the 10 richest Americans, who are
willing to write $10 million cheques as down payments for the cause.
The Las Vegas casino magnate will be among the welcoming party of wealthy
Jewish-American supporters of Mr Romney during his visit to Israel in
Jerusalem this weekend.
Meetings with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an old Romney
managing consulting acquaintance from Boston, and Palestinian leaders were
top of the official agenda for the former Massachusetts governor.
But in a fundraising event at the King David Hotel, Mr Adelson will be the
star turn. The stridently Zionist billionaire and his Israeli wife Miriam
have pledged to donate $100 million to Republican groups to fight November’s
elections, and gave $10 million last month alone.
Money and politics have long been inextricably linked in America, but the role
of deep-pocketed donors has never been more prominent. And in a major
reversal for President Barack Obama, who was the fund-raising behemoth of
the 2008 campaign, Mr Romney is making the financial headlines this year.
The Adelsons, who at first backed his Republican primary campaign foe Newt
Gingrich, are not even the biggest conservative contributors. The top spot
goes to brothers David and Charles Koch, long-time supporters of libertarian
causes, who have said that they will this year pour $400 million into groups
that support Mr Romney and Republican candidates in national and state
elections.
Most money goes to what are known in American campaign law parlance as “super
PACs” (political action committees) – groups nominally independent of
any candidate which can solicit and spend unlimited sums from individual
donors, as well as from corporations and unions, on highly partisan
advertising.
In this record-breaking year, the biggest financial juggernaut is American
Crossroads, a super PAC headed by Karl Rove, the former chief political
adviser to President George W Bush. The groupset a fund-raising target for
this election cycle of $300 million, and is on course to beat that, while an
affiliated “social welfare” pressure group is aiming to bring in
another $100 million.
That means that Mr Rove — once dubbed “Bush’s brain” — and his
team will have more money with which to wage war on the airwaves in about 10
swing states than John McCain spent in total when he ran for president on
the Republican ticket in 2008.
In the absence of individual donors on this scale, Mr Obama has been investing
much of his time in lucrative fund-raising dinners hosted by the likes of
George Clooney, the actor, in Los Angeles and Anna Wintour, the editor of
Vogue, with the actress Sarah-Jessica Parker in New York.
Even before the final stages of the battle for the White House, the outlandish
sums already raised and spent are head-spinning.
The Obama and Romney campaigns, combined with the two national parties,
brought in more than $1 billion in total by the end of last month. In June
alone, the Romney operation raised more than $100 million, leading Mr Obama
to warn supporters that without more help he could be the first sitting
president to be financially outpaced by a challenger.
Mr Obama is now effectively splitting his time between three jobs – governing,
campaigning and fundraising – a division of duties that, say his critics, is
contributing to political paralysis in Washington.
This year’s figures are startling. Just 65 individual donors — or the top one
per cent of contributors to Super PACs — have written cheques for more than
$143 million so far, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics (CPR),
which monitors campaign finances.
Those predominantly billionaire donors have been giving overwhelmingly to
Republican-supporting groups, by a ratio of four to one. Some Left-leaning
bastions such as Hollywood are simply disappointed with Mr Obama’s
performance, and the president is now at odds with many of his financial
industry backers from 2008.
After nearly four years in office Mr Obama is finding his own supporters have
lost much of their early enthusiasm, compared with his foes’ ardour to oust
him from the White House.
“For donors to want to give to a group like ours, two factors need to be
in play,” Jonathan Collegio of American Crossroads told The Sunday
Telegraph. “They need to have a deep sense of concern about the
direction of the country. And they have to sense the opportunity to change
the direction of the country by helping the cause. We are seeing both these
factors now.”
The role of billionaire conservative donors in the campaign has prompted
charges by liberal groups that they are “buying the election”.
“You’ve got a few very wealthy people lining up trying to purchase the
White House for Mr Romney,” said David Plouffe, a senior Obama adviser,
last month.
“Money matters in politics. We’re running a great campaign, we’ve got
millions of volunteers… but you’ve got to have enough money to run a
one-year campaign. Our big concern are these super-PACs.”
Mr Obama himself claimed in 2010 that such groups were a “threat to our
democracy”. Yet within months, his own supporters set up their own
pro-Obana Super PAC run by Bill Burton, a former spokesman for the
president.
Mr Collegio rejects the criticisms. “This is a classic case of double
standards,” he said. “Liberal groups and donors were ahead of the
conservatives on this and in 2004 and 2008 they were running exactly the
same type of ads that Crossroads is now. Obama was crowing against us while
his supporters launched their own super PACS structured exactly on the
American Crossroads model.”
Erika Johnsen, a conservative commentator, agreed. “The hypocrisy truly knows
no bounds,” she said. “Really, the Obama campaign can stop acting like the
innocent victims of evil corporate usury.
“Obama was Wall Street’s favourite candidate in 2008. If [he] is so averse to
large donations, how is it somehow more moral to accept gigantic sums from
unions (whose donations are almost overwhelmingly Democratic) than
corporations (who tend to divide their donations between both parties)?”
John Catsimatidis, a New York supermarket mogul contemplating a run for mayor
in 2013, told The Sunday Telegraph that he was pursuing his democratic
rights when he donated to Republican-supporting groups. “This is a battle
for the soul of our country and I am proud to be involved,” he said. “Where
the system gets corrupted is when lobbyists expect favours in return for
money raised. But is everyone’s constitutional right to contribute to the
cause they believe in.”
The nexus of politics and money, anathema to many abroad, is indeed protected
as a bedrock of constitutional liberty under the First Amendment that
guarantees freedom of speech.
In 2010, a landmark Supreme Court ruling confirmed the right of companies and
unions, as well as individual donors, to give unlimited sums to political
action committees and similar entities, though not directly to candidates.
“The basic principle is that money that is spent on political speech, such as
advertisements and publications supporting opposing candidates for
president, is protected under the constitution,” said Floyd Abrams, a New
York lawyer who argued the case before the country’s highest court.
“A good deal of that political speech is negative, but negative speech is as
protected as positive, and attacking is as protected as defending.”
Mr Abrams is no conservative and has contributed this year to Mr Obama’s
campaign, but he said that constitutional case for unlimited donations to
political groups was clear. “It is true that some people have more money to
spend that another, but the way we decide to deal with those inequalities or
not is through policies on taxation for example, not restricting speech,” he
said.
And as Mr Romney’s overseas tour illustrates, the all-American amalgam of big
dollars and campaign politics does not stop at America’s borders as he
prepares for the final coffers-draining 100 days of the race for the White
House..
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