Sheldon Aldeson, the billionaire casino mogul who spent almost a hundred million dollars trying get Republicans elected in 2012, now is changing up his strategy for trying to buy the government of his liking
Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who along with his wife plowed more than $92 million into efforts to help mostly losing candidates in the 2012 elections, is undertaking a new strategy for 2016 — to tap his fortune on behalf of a more mainstream Republican with a clear shot at winning the White House, according to people familiar with his thinking.
In 2012, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson spent so much of their money on long-shot candidate Newt Gingrich that they helped extend an ugly intraparty fight that left the eventual nominee, Mitt Romney, severely bruised by the time he faced President Obama in the general election.
You can thank the Citizen's United ruling for giving us the ‘Sheldon Primary’ and handing this billionaire more power in shaping political candidates than ever before. Because of Sheldon's interference in the process, he helped to prolong Republican pain during the wild GOP primaries in 2012 which benefited the Democratic party. I don't know how he thought Newt Gingrich wasn't an extremist candidate when he backed him, but that's water under the bridge now.
He's suddenly worried that the GOP will be stuck with a "crazy extremist" running in 2016 and that's making him very nervous.
Victor Chaltiel, a GOP donor and an Adelson friend who sits on the board of Las Vegas Sands, said at this early stage in the 2016 sweepstakes, Adelson is “neutral” and has his eye on a number of potential candidates, including Bush and Christie.
“He doesn’t want a crazy extremist to be the nominee,” Chaltiel said. “He wants someone who has the chance to win the election, who is reasonable in his positions, who has convictions but is not totally crazy".
It's people like Sheldon that have turned the GOP into a far right militia moment instead of a real political party. His problem now is that just about every Republican politician out there is a right wing extremist of some kind and their positions are totally insane.
Just check out Marco Rubio, Ted, Cruz, Rand Paul, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum to start with. The only person that suits his new strategium is Jeb Bush and I doubt he'll come close to winning the GOP primary.
Aldeson has not been deterred by his previous failures:
The Adelsons also reportedly donated tens of millions of dollars to politically active nonprofit organizations, including Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, as well as to groups affiliated with the Koch-backed political network, which do not disclose their donors.Despite the poor showing in 2012, Adelson told the Wall Street Journal after the election that he was not turned off of political spending — and in fact would devote even more resources in the upcoming cycles. “I don’t cry when I lose,” he said. “There’s always a new hand coming up.”
This guy throws money around to everyone. As long as these creeps have money to burn they will always be trying to buy the United states government. It's a crying shame.
