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Wednesday, December 2, 2015

What $47.5 Million Buys You in The 2016 GOP Primary

The answer is not a lot. Prominent Establishment candidates, Jeb, Rubio, and Kasich have spent this total amount in tv ads so far. Meanwhile, Cruz, Dr. Ben, and Trump have spent a total of $2.9 million.

Then you look at the polls.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/2016_republican_presidential_nomination-3823.html

There has been a lot of talk about campaign finance lately. It''s a huge focus of Bernie's and Lawrence Lessig had a single issue campaign around it-he dropped out after Hillary's Benghazi testimony as did other opponents but Bernie and Martin O'Malley.

I don't deny that it's an important issue though I'm not a single issue ideologue over it; you have to be sensitive to the time path dependence of policy. The optimum policy prior to Citizen's United might not be the same in the post CU world.

And it should go without saying that to do anything about CU we need a Democratic Supreme Court again-something we haven't had for 30 years. It's amazing but the conservatives have dominated the SJC since the mid 80s.

Just what kind of reforms and changes we want for campaign finance remains to be seen. I don't fault Hillary for her donors as it's not fair or reasonable for her to be expected to unilaterally disarm.

However, this primary campaign season in the GOP has been interesting as it shows that truly money isn't everything. It's strange to say but the billionaire candidate Donald Trump has brought this out.

To date has spent $220,000 on tv ads and yet h leads the polls and Jeb raised $100 million in Super PAC money alone and we see where he resides.

Indeed, Trump's success might even be a template for the future in which candidates can make a huge splash without spending big money.

To be sure, Trump is a rather unique case thanks to his celebrity, but the whole thing is very thought provoking to say the least.

He has broke all the rules and thrived. No matter what there will be a lot to take away from his campaign and this most unique GOP primary.

Christie got pissed of yesterday, which is hardly news-the guy has a real anger issue and unlike Trump's rants Christie is not really funny at all when he goes off. This is someone who takes pride in being a bully. Who used to take youtube videos of his verbal abuse of female teachers, etc. He stopped when this started to wear thin.

It was fun to see him meltdown yesterday because he kept getting asked about Trump.

His NJ paper at home enjoys it as much as I do. In NJ they are happy to point out that the polls again Trump is a winner and Christie is a loser,

http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/12/7_winners_and_losers_from_the_latest_2016_presiden.html


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