After having written dozens of fundraising letters, I can appreciate that a certain amount of hyperbole is acceptable when asking for a contribution. The threat the letter identifies — a campaign rival, dangerous legislation, a severe lack of resources, etc. — has to at least sound serious or your donors won’t feel inclined to write a check.<\/p>\n
That being said, it’s important not to actually lie. Hyping a potential threat is one thing, making stuff up about that threat is another.<\/p>\n
Friend and fellow blogger Sam Felder<\/a> linked the other day to a Chicago Sun-Times article<\/a> highlighting the Bush campaign’s latest fundraising strategy. Unfortunately, Bush’s team isn’t using exaggerations or minor overstatements; they’re just not telling the truth. <\/p>\n As the Sun-Times mentioned, the Bush campaign is “appealing for donations by portraying Bush as a fund-raising underdog who won’t have enough cash to defend himself against Democratic attacks.”<\/p>\n “Democrats and their allies will have more money to spend attacking the president during the nomination battle than we will have to defend him,” campaign chairman Marc Racicot wrote in the fund-raising e-mail sent last week.<\/p>\n This is crazy. Bush is a fundraising machine. In just the second quarter, he raised $34 million, which was considerably more than his nine Democratic opponents combined. Bush is on pace to collect over $200 million for his re-election campaign — more than any other candidate has ever raised. Just a few days after Racicot’s claim hit GOP mailboxes, data released by the Federal Election Commission showed that the Republican fundraising advantage over Dems is already huge.<\/p>\n The federally registered GOP campaign committees — including the RNC, the GOP congressional campaign committees and some state and local party accounts — have raised a combined $139 million in the first six months of this year. Democratic campaign committees, meanwhile, have raised a combined $56 million, which is only 40% of the GOP total.<\/p>\n
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\nIndeed, if there’s one inescapable fact of politics in America, it’s that the GOP will always<\/i> raise more money. It was true before McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation became law, and it will be even easier now.<\/p>\n