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Redstate
A Primer for
Rich Donors Who Got Taken to the Cleaners by Republican Consultants
By Erick Erickson
November 27th, 2012
When consultants told rich donors who were funding them that they were
not making money off the Super PAC’s that the rich idiots . . . er . .
. donors funded, they were being honest. They probably were not.
But ad heavy Super PACs outsourced the ad buys, the mail, the data
collection, etc. to other groups that got commissions and you can be
sure that a lot of these supposedly noble consultants working for free
were making a killing off of commissions, referral fees, etc. through
their relationships with the commissioned vendors doing the actual
work. Read this old post of mine for a sampling of how these
consultants can make money without actually making money.
Just as important as making money for these guys was control over the
data. In fact, in singular importance this campaign season has been the
buzz word “data.” But what the hell is that data and why is it so
important?
Well, for starters, let me fill you in on one piece of technology that
flew under the radar this season. It is called Gravity and it is
probably the only major piece of campaign technology to come out of
2012 with a proven track record. About the only major donor on the
right to have come into contact with it was Joe Ricketts. And Ricketts
only came into contact with it because he was smart enough to direct
Ending Spending, his group, to work with existing, small groups on the
ground. About the only major group to use it was FreedomWorks, which,
unlike a lot of other big groups on the right, decided not to go
proprietary, but to go for winning at all costs. [See update in the
next paragraph regarding Heritage Action for America]
It was the existing small groups like American Majority Action and the
Madison Project using Gravity primarily and those groups were
instrumental in its creation. With the exception of FreedomWorks,
virtually everybody else went out to build their own thing. In fact,
several of the very well known consultants as seen on TV and others you
never see did their best to kill Gravity, stop it from being built, and
convince donors who came into contact with it to defund the groups or
pressure those groups to move away from Gravity. [UPDATE: I'm told
Heritage Action for America joined FreedomWorks as two of the only
major groups to use Gravity.]
Gravity, in fact, explains a lot about how the donors got so screwed in
much the same way the RNC screwed itself with Voter Vault.
To understand Gravity, you rich donors need a basic primer. You may
think you know this stuff, but I bet you really don’t. Let me break it
down for you.
Of the 100% of Americans who exist, about 66% are eligible to vote.
These are all rough estimates.
40% are actually registered to vote.
25% of the total American population will probably, actually go vote.
Therefore, a candidate needs 13% of the population to win.
Read the rest of the article at Redstate
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