Yes, Small Donors Are Bad

Large donors? Also not great.

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203
Rep. Matt Gaetz , then-Senate candidate J.D. Vance, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene speak to the press after a campaign rally for Vance on April 30, 2022. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

I rise to defend Jonah Goldberg, and not just because he signs my paycheck.

(Kidding. I take direct deposit.)

For days the merchants of outrage on The App Formerly Known As Twitter have taken noisy exception to this clip, one of the most anodyne points Jonah’s ever made on air.

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  1. Avatar photo
    WKDawson

    Shouldn't "small-donor rage-gifting" be "small-donor rage-GRifting"? Whatever the case, good point.

    In particular, your point about the Norman Rockwell painting
    𝐼𝑛 𝑝𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑒, 𝑖𝑡 𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑠 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑔𝑢𝑦 𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑘 𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑚𝑒𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑘 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑄𝐴𝑛𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑚𝑖𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑝𝑠 𝑏𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑝𝑢𝑡 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑣𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠.

    Whatever happened to Proverbs 29?; for example, "𝐴 𝑓𝑜𝑜𝑙 𝑢𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑡ℎ 𝑎𝑙𝑙 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑑: 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑎 𝑤𝑖𝑠𝑒 𝑚𝑎𝑛 𝑘𝑒𝑒𝑝𝑒𝑡ℎ 𝑖𝑡 𝑖𝑛 𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑎𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑠"? Somehow, we are now more inclined first to open the mouth and far, far later, finally to engage that f-ing brain.

    I don't think the large donor special interests and lobby groups are benign, but I grant that they are probably better informed than the QAnon and microchip crowd. Oil and pharmaceutical companies have complex long-term issues that require voters to put in some dedicated study to understand. Most don't have the time or the inclination. It is so much easier to use them as scapegoats. On the other hand, had Detroit heeded Jimmy Carter about aiming at developing electric cars rather than wailing and moaning, some 50 years later, we would be a lot more ahead of the rest of the world on EV matters. At least on __small__ scale, what crime would that have been? So both ends of the spectrum are problematical, but I grant that the special interests of big donors are more informed.

    Agreed on the internet too. The ease of exposing nonsense also makes it easier to create nonsense. Perhaps like emails, we'll just have to learn to get smarter about how we evaluate things. Good solid news agencies like TD will probably weather this storm and the storms to come. At the end of the day, whereas the truth often seems as feeble as the rain, rain has brought down many a great mountain.

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  2. Marla Hughes

    Ron Paul's money bombs

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  3. Avatar photo
    Mattjabour

    Republicans have nobody to blame but themselves on this one. Which party was it that decided money equals speech? They were just thinking in terms of higher denomination speech at the time.

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    1. Schinski108

      It's actually just the first amendment.

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  4. Avatar photo
    Bayesian

    Quoth Our Nick "Ten years ago, before Donald Trump was a twinkle in the Republican base’s eye"

    I'd be most interested to see if there is any polling to establish both
    1) name recognition (my guess would be fairly high); and
    2) net favorability

    for the once and future Maximum Leader of the Republican Party as of 2013.

    As I remember it, His Trumpiness' main function in Republican politics at the time was keeping birtherism high profile (as opposed to higher profile, currently in office Republicans, who mostly just played "just asking questions" footsie with birtherism).

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  5. Avatar photo
    ReneFerrerJr

    WOW! I am a white Latino born in a Latin American country with a culture of rape that also happens to be a communist dictatorship. Every year I scrape up $100 to send to theDispatch and this year I scraped up $50 for the Christie campaign, and $15 for the Good News Network. I can't do this in Cuba because we have no Democracy. I am so proud of our country for having the 1st amendment to our constitution which allows you to tell me I'm the problem because I am a small dollar donator.

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    1. Pohl

      Finally! An ally here. (smile)

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  6. Affable Misanthrope

    "Jonah isn’t a walking, talking Silicon Valley start-up owned by a billionaire tech bro, which is more than one can say for Vance. " Thanks Nick for that gem.

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  7. Cindibadia

    “We were promised good government and instead we got organ-grinder politics, an endless line of tin-cup rattlers one-upping each other for spare change from working stiffs. The people—many of them, at least—want monkeys, not good government.”

    Is this too long for a bumper sticker?

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  8. Avatar photo
    Jak41592

    A quick caveat on the "institutionalists can't raise money" bit because Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have royally pissed off the Progressive donor base. I think this is false. Jon Tester does not appear to be struggling to save money (and he's about as institutionalist as they come). Angus King raised $5.5M last time he ran and cruised to re-election. Lisa Murkowski, in 2022, had no issue raising cash to win. Institutionalists and moderates can win and raise plenty of money. Just not when you're as incompetent a politician as Kyrsten Sinema.

    Mark Kelly is ALSO an institutionalist. He has had no problem raising money. Why is Kelly fine and Sinema in jail? Answer: because she's gone out of her way to royally piss off Progressives, and for what? It feels like the pleasure of it. The sad part is: she's actually a good legislator. I will be sad when she's gone, but she did it to herself.

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    1. Jason Thomas

      I wouldn't call Tester an institutionalization. He's more of a modern Biden..a glad hander, a schmooze. He doesn't rock the boat. But I don't think he holds the idea of "protecting the institution".

      He's my Senator, and I don't mind him, (especially compared to Baucus). But I wouldn't call him an institutionalist.

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    2. Avatar photo
      Bayesian

      I have a certain liking for Sinema (not pretending to religious scores serious points for me in anyone vying for Federal office), and very little liking for capital-P Progressives (I'm a grumpy center-leftie like Spanberger or Klobuchar or Sherrod Brown; perhaps grumpier though), but I have to take exception to some of "she's actually a good legislator" ; if she would have been somewhat less gnomic about what she most cared about, both positive and negative, in the Build Back Better Act it would have been a very good idea.

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  9. Wes.Bridges

    So long as the ticket to the candidate debate stage is the number of donors from discreet states, there really is no point in attempting to quantify the small donors as "good" or "evil." This is the coin of the realm. Small donations are to modern campaigns as signatures used to be.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Eahay19

      Interesting take. I wouldn’t have thought about it that way until you said something. It’s a really good debate to be had….

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      1. Wes.Bridges

        Hard to figure why Jonah and Nick are going after small donors, when the RNC won't let anyone on the stage without 40,000 unique donors. I like what Doug Burgum has to say. He's focused on the economy, national security, and energy, while other candidates are bantering about bathrooms, pronouns, and Walt Disney. I sent him a donation for the sole purpose of helping him get to the debate stage.

        I generally agree with Jonah on a lot of issues, but not this one. It's down to the RNC and their rules for debate.

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  10. Avatar photo
    PJ

    God forbid we educate our citizens and children on civic duty and reason. Jesus cannot survive it.

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About Nick Catoggio

Nick Catoggio is a staff writer at The Dispatch and is based in Texas. Prior to joining the company in 2022, he spent 16 years gradually alienating a populist readership at Hot Air. When Nick isn’t busy writing a daily newsletter on politics, he’s … probably planning the next day’s newsletter.
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