Populists Win, People Happy, Film at 11
"But the dictionary definition of populist is: 'A member or adherent of a political party seeking to represent the interests of ordinary people; a person who holds or who is concerned with the views of ordinary people.'
--R. Limbaugh
The Times-Standard Editorial this morning trumpeted “Populism is back in America”.The editorial talked about how the Iowa caucuses showed how “populist” candidates had done so well. Sen. Barack Obama, who so far has collected $80 million in his race for the presidency, and Rev. Mike Huckbee are considered populists.
Actually Obama and Huckabee won because they had money and/or organization. Huckabee won because there are a lot of Christians in Iowa, and the Christian right is VERY well organized and very rich. And he’s their guy.
Obama won because he has spent even more money than Hillary: $44 million to her paltry $40 million. The $64 million question is: where did that money come from? If you know who paid it, you know who owns him. And I know it wasn’t me or other people putting in $25 here and $25 there. Opensecrets.org points out that 47,643 people donated more than $200 to Obama. By contrast, Dennis Kucinich has raised a little over $1 million, he has 908 $200 plus donors, and 69% of his donors gave less than $200.
It’s my old mantra: Follow the money. Only in this case, it’s follow the mullahs, too: the Christian mullahs and, in Oprah’s case, the celeb mullahs. Just listen to the Fox, ABC, NBC and CBS minarets calling the faithful to prayer. Allah akbar!
I would argue the only real populist candidates are Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, neither of whom, we are told, has a snowball’s chance in hell. And why is that? Because we are told neither has a chance. We believe what we are told (and told and told. . .the essence of advertising). That’s where the $44 million went, and it was spent judiciously.
And did it work? Who won the Iowa caucuses?
The Center for Responsive Politics estimates a billion dollars will be donated in this presidential campaign, and the winners will get around $500 million each. That won’t be Ron Paul and it won’t be Dennis Kucinich.
That isn’t populism in my book. Rush's either.
Comments
It is telling to "follow the money", to be sure. But don't mistake an absence of money, or populist rhetoric, for populism, with or without the money. Keep in mind that for all his truly compelling rhetoric, Ron Paul would like to abandon the income tax structure (screwed up as it has become, but still essentially progressive), starve the government and deeply slash services (populist services will be the first to go), and rely on a "consumption tax" (sales tax) structure. Consumption tax means basically the richest of the rich, who couldn't possibly consume everything they can afford, get to concentrate wealth without taxes, and the proportionality of wealth to tax burden is shifted to the middle class and poorer citizens. This is regressive. And not very populist in my book.
Posted by: Tara | January 12, 2008 08:59 AM