As further evidence that the Republican party is on life support, we have an article from the Wall Street Journal in which Republican strategists bemoan the existence of ActBlue, the Democratic online small donor machine.
Most of the article is about how Republicans fundraise in a capitalistic fashion with the bulk of their campaign funding coming from Billionaire Bucks, a factoid we're all well aware of. The College Republicans bilk Grandma Republicans for their funding, which must be drying up now along with the Billionaires. And then there are the grifter Republicans who fundraise and spend all of their fundraising on themselves (see Backer, Dan).
But here's what we know from this article: Republican billionaire donors, in the era of Trump, are sewing up their deep pockets and saying, "Nope." They don't like the tariffs, they don't like the wall, and maybe they don't like his incompetence though I'm pretty sure they don't care much about that.
This has happened before, as former RGA head Haley Barbour explains:
After Republican President Richard Nixon’s Watergate campaign-finance scandal, “a lot of the party’s big contributors got reluctant to give, afraid that they were going to get embarrassed by something coming back to bite them,” Mr. Barbour said. So the GOP turned its attention to smaller contributions.
“For a long time we were raising more, and from more donors, than the Democrats but we were doing it though older technology, through mail and through phones,” he said. “Democrats did get a head start with online fundraising, but we’re going to catch up for obvious reasons—because we have to.”
The subtext there seems pretty obvious. In the days of Trump, Republican megadonors are keeping their pockets sewn shut. Republicans have to catch up because they've got no one else. It's hard to see how Trump's hardcore prepper base has enough money to cover for the billionaires, but sure, go for it, GOP.
If the Republican Party isn't dead forever after this travesty of a presidency, it will be a disgrace this country will not recover from. Ever.
