One of the big problems with professional conservatism is that many of the people who are part of it are so remarkably bereft of humility while also having so much to be humble about. Take the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) – please. You would think that the organization that botched the 2018 midterms and lost the House might want to listen to its base. But no. No, we knuckle dragging voters are an obstacle to the real objective – which apparently is not victory. If only these people were as committed to fighting liberals as they are fighting conservatives.
Remember, all those Lincoln Project dorks were once “Republican” campaign consultants too. That’s the demo we’re dealing with here.
So, you know how you get all those text messages from various campaign entities that make you want to reach into your phone and throttle the sender? The ones that let you know that Donald Trump is greatly disappointed in you? Well, one popped up on my cell and I lost it. I got fed up. I was done. It read:
"We texted you TWICE. Why did you let your 500% Trump House Patriot match expire AGAIN? We'll give you 1 more chance. 500% match for 1 HR https://nrcc.news/30H8A."
Astonishingly, someone apparently made a conscious decision to send this to me. Let’s unpack it.
“We texted you TWICE.” Wrong. Try dozens of time. These numb-skulled messages have my phone lighting up like a molly dealer’s at Freaknik. Look, I have only a short allotment of time on this mortal coil, and I don’t intend to waste it. There are an infinite number of things that are better ways to spend my time than perusing cheesy money grubs dreamed up by third-tier DC pro-cons who got NRCC gigs because they couldn’t cut it drafting white papers for some think tank with “Liberty” or “Eagles” in its name. These activities include playing lint soccer, forming that 2 Live Crew cover band Larry O’Connor and I have long been talking about, and mocking the erotically dysfunctional losers who write for the Bulwark blog.
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Okay, the last one is worthy of my time, but the point is that these texts are wasting not just my time but the time of everyone whose cell number ever got snorted up into a robocall list. And people are mad about it. I know. I talk to them. Unlike the campaign pros, who clearly don’t.
“Why did you let your 500% Trump House Patriot match expire AGAIN?” it asked, and the answer is because the NRCC sucks and I don’t trust it. Nor should I. I took a look at the July 2020 FEC filing and I’m just a simple LA trial lawyer who don’t cotton much to fancy book learnin’ n’ figurin’, but it looks to me like donor contributions were $9,860,070.20 yet NRCC expenses were $6,214,108.77. It seems to mean that better than six bucks out of ten that we give are going…down the toilet. Now, perhaps that’s not a correct analysis, but if I’m wrong about the insane overhead then the NRCC communications shop could have communicated that to the base instead of flaccidly attempting to fly top cover for the scam when conservatives called it out on Twitter.
Also, I’m a bit confused about the “500% Trump House Patriot match.” Why not just toss that 500% matching amount into the pot without my donation? After all, I’m sure that match is a real thing that really exists for real.
Here’s some real talk. These needy, obnoxious texts are ticking off the base. I bet they get some money, but they also leave a ton on the table. Of course, the DC swells have no idea since they are DC swells, but here in America, we’re all done with them. And it’s not merely because we resent transparent grifts designed to separate old people from their Social Security cash, though that is unacceptable (I recall trashing Dems for this same idiocy in prior cycles). It’s because this so clearly demonstrates the utter contempt the establishment has for the base that is the establishment’s whole purpose for being.
Now, after I made clear my displeasure on Twitter, the NRCC’s communications shop deployed not to win the election, not to learn how it could be more effective, but to shut me up, along with the hundreds of outraged conservatives who joined in. I was told that I was putting the whole campaign to retake the House at risk, as if an operation vulnerable to one guy on Twitter ought to be the cornerstone of our offensive. And I was warned that I should lay off the NRCC because it has collected only half the dough the Democrats’ congressional committee has, as if this candid admission of failure doesn’t demonstrate the need for a thorough house cleaning instead of a doubling down. The argument was pretty much, “We’re doing terribly – stop messing it up, man!”
And not surprisingly, this strategy went poorly for them and they went radio silent after their humiliation, but the damage was done. The NRCC has zero cred, and it’s a result of its track record of failure, its 60% overhead, and its innovative strategy of trying to cut the heads off of its critics rather than pull its own head out of where it’s wedged.
The establishment needs to understand and accept that the fat days of skimming the cream off, cycle after cycle, while two mainstream parties traded power are gone. The age of the clinky-clinky bourbon glass, winky-winky smoky room scam has passed. What is at stake is not the GOP spending a few years in the wilderness; the other party wants to destroy our country and turn us into serfs. This is serious, and we need serious people with a serious strategy, not this amateur hour clusterfark.
The NRCC is dead to us unless and until we see some heads on pikes and until we see that the vast majority of the money we donate is going to candidates, not to parasites. And all the other acronym groups and PACs better wake up too. They are next.
We’re done with funny business as usual. We have less than 100 days until election day. NRCC, get squared away or get bent.
But the answer is not for us to walk away from supporting congressional candidates. Far from it. No, since the institutions have failed us, we need to do it ourselves – again. The answer is to give directly, so the money can’t disappear into the Hugo Boss suit pocket of some nominally-Republican hustler. This is especially true if you are like me and trapped in a solid blue district – my congressman is Ted Lieu. Pick a winner somewhere else and send him/her your dough.
Want some ideas? There’s new Rep. Mike Garcia, who beat "throuple" girl Katie Hill in that special election in California-25. How about Army infantry vet Sean Parnell running against a Pelosi puppet in Pennsylvania-17? Or consider Jim Bognet, taking on a slick fake blue dog in Pennsylvania-08.
The establishment is simply not making it happen. And worse, when we point that out, it gets triggered like a SJW who sees a flag. So we need to do it ourselves. That’s how we elected Donald Trump last time, and that’s how we need to take back the House.
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