The Savage Republican

I got another interesting email the other day. This one got me to thinking...

"The wealthy are the last people you might expect to see leading movements that claim to support the working class, but the strange thong is that without the wealthy leftists the liberal movement in America would be dead. The money from George Soros and the wealthy people who voted for Lieberman’s challenger (the poor voted for Lieberman) are typical examples of how the liberal left has become the creation of elite billionaires and millionaires."

When you consider that the patrons of today's modern left (George Soros, Barbra Streisand, Microsoft co-founder Paul Lewis, entertainment mogul Steve Bing or locally the Patricians from Growth & Justice) you have to admit, my correspondent has a very valid point.

Why is this?

"Let me posit a few ideas:
1. The rich like to enjoy a lifestyle free from moral encumbrances and they are loath to see their personal behavior ruin their reputation and hurt their wallets. By promoting moral relativism they escape serious scrutiny and can behave as they please.
2. The rich know that the poor, upon whose work their fortune rests, are less likely to complain or be a problem is they are both entertained and materially sustained. Using moral relativism they can keep the poor focused on self indulgence rather than their sorry state, using hand-outs they can keep them still too poor to ever compete but not so poor that they riot, and using class or race warfare they can keep the poor focused on “the others” rather than their actual plight and the failure of the leadership.
3. The rich find nation-states to be quite an inconvenience. By reducing or eliminating trade barriers and by reducing the dominance of one or a few nation states they can raise the importance of non state entities, such as their corporations and foundations AND they can get around any national laws that curtail their ability to “buy low and sell high.”
4. The rich want to be able to control the political scene rather than being accountable to government or the will of People, so they tend to support judicial activism, top-down control of education, a liberal monopoly of the media, and keeping the poor in a state of ignorance."

Again, given what we have seen from the actions of those wealthy benefactors of the left, my correspondent has a point. There is an old Biblical saying "you can tell them by their fruit". Well the fruits of the labors of the wealthy leftists are there for all of us to see.

"There are probably other reasons you can cite for the trend amongst the really wealthy to be really liberal, but the point is that the very class that seems to be target of liberal rhetoric is the very class that is actually funding that rhetoric, which begs the question, “why?” For the answer to that question I refer you to the above reasons plus any you may see. What we must remember, however, is that when liberals talk about the rich not pulling their fair share and all that what they are doing is nothing more than a smoke screen: their policies tend not to hurt their rich patrons but, rather, the poor who are misled into believing the rhetoric." (emphasis mine)

WOW - that is probably the most succinct explaination of the whole "the rich need to pay their fair share" that I have ever heard!

Do not despair dear friends....there is some good news. The liberal benefactors appear to be sitting this election out, according to this report from "The Hill":

"This year, those well-heeled donors have yet to join the fray. Soros has given less than $2 million, Lewis a paltry $1.1 million, and the others even less. Some are eschewing election-year operations in favor of long-term efforts such as the Democracy Alliance, a group of more than 80 high net-worth individuals funding projects to amplify the liberal message, identify future leaders and conduct research."

Why are they backing away? Well it is a classic lesson in why you don't want to trust the Democrats with your tax dollars.

"These and other large donors bankrolled America Coming Together in 2004, a 527 organization devoted to turning out Democratic voters in 17 states. Although the group did make significant gains, it was outpaced by Republican organizing in key states like Ohio, leading some big donors to feel burned by the 2004 election, upset that they shelled out millions only to see Kerry lose, Democratic fundraisers said.“There was a lot of questioning about where money went and was it spent properly,” said Andy Spahn, an advisor to Hollywood donors. “In some part that led to disillusionment and cynicism about 527s.” (emphasis mine)

It would be nice to think that the bloom is off of the 527 rose, but I would not count on that yet! Until such time as the odiuos McCain-Feingold BCFRA is history, the 527's will dominate our political landscape. BCFR gave birth to the 527 movement and only its repeal will return politics to the people.