{"id":2376,"date":"2004-08-20T09:52:43","date_gmt":"2004-08-20T14:52:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2376.html"},"modified":"2004-08-20T09:52:43","modified_gmt":"2004-08-20T14:52:43","slug":"weve-finally-discovered-bushs-true-strength","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/weve-finally-discovered-bushs-true-strength\/","title":{"rendered":"We’ve finally discovered Bush’s true strength"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bush may be an awful president, but the guy knows how to do two things really well: raise and spend<\/a> a lot of money.<\/p>\n

The Bush campaign raised $14 million in July, about as much as it has been taking in each month since it stopped holding fund-raising events in April and continued accepting donations through the mail and over the Internet.<\/p>\n

Bush took in a record $242 million from the official start of his campaign in May 2003 through last month. He started August with $32.5 million left and about $458,000 in bills to pay.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let’s do the math: Bush has raised $242 million and has $32.5 million left. This means the most prolific fundraising campaign in the history of the world has spent about $210 million before the final three months of the campaign<\/i>. That’s simply stunning. I mean, really, pick an adjective — unbelievable, mind-boggling, unprecedented — they all apply here.<\/p>\n

What’s downright hilarious, though, is that Bush’s ability to spend like a drunken sailor hasn’t worked. It’s kept Bush relatively close, but after spending $210 million — far more than any candidate in any race in any democracy ever — he intended to bury Kerry and open up a huge incumbent lead going into the final stretch. It was “shock and awe,” campaign-style. Instead, he’s losing<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Remember that movie Brewster’s Millions<\/a>? Richard Pryor had to spend $30 million in order to win some huge inheritance. The trick was he couldn’t actually buy anything tangible, so he wouldn’t have anything to show for his lavish spending spree.<\/p>\n

Sound familiar?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bush may be an awful president, but the guy knows how to do two things really well: raise and spend a lot of money. The Bush campaign raised $14 million in July, about as much as it has been taking in each month since it stopped holding fund-raising events in April and continued accepting donations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}