RNC fundraising document: Use fear of Obama’s “socialist” agenda to raise dough

If it’s a day ending in “Y”, it must be time for a Politico story about the RNC alienating its fundraisers. The good news? Given Obama’s state-by-state approval ratings, if fear of The One’s agenda is the key to big money then the path to November shall be paved with bricks of gold. The bad news? Calling your donors “reactionary” and “ego-driven” isn’t usually the quickest way to their wallets.

“The document was used for a fundraising presentation Chairman Steele did not attend, nor had he seen the document,” RNC Communications Director Doug Heye said in an email. “Fundraising documents are often controversial.

“Obviously, the Chairman disagrees with the language and finds the use of such imagery to be unacceptable. It will not be used by the Republican National Committee – in any capacity – in the future,” Heye said…

The small donors who are the targets of direct marketing are described under the heading “Visceral Giving.” Their motivations are listed as “fear;” “Extreme negative feelings toward existing Administration;” and “Reactionary.”

Major donors, by contrast, are treated in a column headed “Calculated Giving.”
Their motivations include: “Peer to Peer Pressure”; “access”; and “Ego-Driven.”

The slide also allows that donors may have more honorable motives, including “Patriotic Duty.”

You can view the whole powerpoint here but these are the two slides that have lefties breathing into paper bags. Note that “Visceral Giving” also includes “Issue/circumstantially oriented,” which Politico neglects to mention.

The “evil empire” gallery is stupid and amateurish (Reid as … Scooby Doo?) and “reactionary” has enough sinister connotations to qualify as an outright embarrassment, even if it wasn’t meant in the most unsavory sense of the term. But as much as we all enjoy dumping on the Steele-run RNC, I don’t quite follow Ambinder’s logic that this proves Republican donors are being “manipulated.” The base has been anxious about the White House’s statist agenda since Inauguration Day; the GOP doesn’t have to manufacture what already exists. In which case, the “manipulation” in their fundraising pitch is … what? “If you’re worried about Obama, help us defeat him”? Scandal. As for manipulating big donors by playing to their egos, fair enough, but surely wealthy contributors aren’t so naive that they don’t realize that’s part of the game. When my insurance agent tells me he likes my tie, I don’t seriously think he likes my tie. If I’m smart enough to detect an ego stroke in process, I take it millionaires are too.

Frankly, this unforced error was almost worth committing to watch the DNC hysterically overreact to the idea of fear-based politics. Sample quote:

If you had any doubt, any doubt whatsoever, that the Republican Party has been taken over by the fear-mongering lunatic fringe, those doubts were erased today…

It is a sad commentary on the state of the Republican Party that, devoid of ideas and solutions to our nation’s problems, problems created on their watch, that they would resort to these type of tactics. It’s sad. But true.

This comes on the very day that Obama rolled out his new health-care bill as the product of the best of Democratic and Republican ideas. But oh well. I’ll leave you with this golden oldie, also from the studiously fear-avoiding Democratic National Committee. Enjoy it, you racist woman-hating warmongering teabaggers, you.

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