Saturday, December 12, 2009

The Kind of Candidates We Should Not be Recruiting

In this article Patrick Ruffini argues that another front in the war on the establishment is stopping ending the search for self funded candidates. This is a must read article as we prepare for the 2010 election cycle.

An important quote is
The lesson here is that fundraising is not an independent variable. Fundraising is a dependent variable and the independent variable is the message. There does not exist an innate ability to fundraise independent of a strong message -- unless the candidate is fabulously wealthy and can self-fund. And in cases where there might be, all the fundraising in the world cannot overcome a poor message. If a candidate is wealthy or has rich friends, but has no message, the GOP should run -- not walk -- away from that candidate.

3 comments:

4hkidcj said...

I agree with this, however, I think this will confuse many voters. The rumor is, rich people are bad, especially in Washington. What no one thinks about is, if they're wealthy they probably know a thing or two about how to handle money. Wealthy candidates can be bad, if they just want to make more money by getting elected. Anyone who is well read can distinguish which candidates are bad and which are good. A wealthy candidate does not make a bad candidate. During the 2008 electionl many people strayed away from Mitt Romney because he was a multi-millonair. However, this candidate probably would have been our best option considering he knows how to handle money. Instead, we nominated John McCain who has time and again voted for bills that conservatives whould not be supporting. I do not think it is wise to avoid a candidate soley because he/she is wealthy. I think we should focus more on the views of the candidates before we focus on their financial status. I do know that this article does not say, "all rich candidates are bad." I just wanted to make it clear that people do not ignore a candidate on the basis of their finances and I think this article could confuse voters in to doing so. In addition, poor candidates could be just as bad as the wealthy candidates described in this article. Many people who are not as well off as others will run with the sole intention of becoming well off.

Brittany Barden said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Brittany Barden said...

I certainly agree that the message is far more important than fundraising ability. Or, one could add, 'electibility.' That is something that annoys me to no end. "But he/she can beat the Democrat! The other [generally conservative] candidate has no chance!" Oh really? Well, if we tried running real people with strongly held beliefs and a love for their country, not power, you just might be surprised.