The Gantt Report
Have you ever tried to garner someone’s affection? No matter how many cards you buy, flowers you buy, no matter how much jewelry or clothing you buy and no matter how many romantic vacations you finance, if a person doesn’t want you, they just don’t want you.
When a bitch gets in heat, every dog in the neighborhood knows it. But no matter what breed of dog is sniffing around for a chance to tap that thing, the female dog will only allow the dog she desires to have sex with her.
In politics, if you didn’t learn anything from the 2012 elections, you should have learned that Super PAC money can’t buy you love!
For years and years, The Gantt Report has told candidates that anybody can tell you that you need some money to run for office, but the person that spends the most is not necessarily guaranteed a victory.
I haven’t counted, but it appears that more money was spent in the 2012 election cycle than during any other election period in history.
Don’t worry about the billions spent by the candidates. Sit down and take a deep breath while I report about some of the money spent by independent Republican-leaning groups in their effort to elect Mitt Romney and to defeat President Barack Obama.
First, you should know the United States Supreme Court decided to allow wealthy individuals and corporations to spend as much money as they wanted to influence elections. Even though registered voters were limited in the amount of money they could contribute to candidates, so-called “Super PACs” could spend millions on political races with little or no restrictions or regulations. Even foreigners and other countries could spend huge sums of money to determine American political outcomes.
Idiots that wasted millions trying to influence 2012 elections include Karl Rove’s American Crossroads and its nonprofit arm, Crossroads GPS, which spent $180 million on their losing presidential effort and another $76 million on ads for seven GOP Senate candidates (five of those candidates lost); The US Chamber of Commerce, which spent $33 million on ads for losing Senate candidates; Restore Our Future, which spent $91 million on ads to elect loser Romney; Charles and David Koch, who spent $66 million on ads for loser Romney; casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who spent $53 million trying to help Romney win; and Harold Simmons and his wife, who contributed $24 million to losing Republican candidate campaigns.
At least $380 million were spent by GOP groups to beat President Obama and other Democrats in 2012 elections.
Now I’m no math major, but it seems that the money spent on helping Mitt Romney was terribly wasted.
Hmmm. I wonder if $380 million was handed out to Black voters in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states, would that have influenced some Blacks to vote Republican? No, don’t wonder about that. Rich political devils could have given a million unemployed Blacks minimum wage jobs and many of those African-Americans would have felt that the GOP did more to address Black unemployment than the president and the Democratic Party did.
What if $380 million had been spent with Black-owned media? Would that have gotten more Blacks to vote Republican? Maybe.
The 2012 elections were influenced much more by Black and other non-White voters far more than the election was influenced by devilish rich people with racist and malicious intentions.
The moral of this column is obvious. TV ads don’t vote, robocalls don’t vote and endless direct mail pieces don’t vote. People who are registered voters vote!
Anybody can tell a candidate to spend money during a political campaign, but only an expert that is in touch with both the people and the process can tell you when, where and how much money to spend to achieve your political goals.
As I said earlier, romance is a lot like politics. No matter how much you have or how much you spend, money can’t buy you love!
