March 13, 2007

The Romney Strategy: Buy Off Opponents

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mitt_romney130.jpgMitt Romney is so wrong for the Republican base on so many issues, he’s made a lot of enemies within his own party. Now that he’s running for president, each one of those enemies can find a national platform to slam the helmet-haired flip-flopper. But Romney has a solution: pay everyone to shut up.

In The Nation, Max Blumenthal writes that Romney has made large donations out of his personal fortune to the National Review Institute, the Federalist Society, and the Massachusetts Family Institute, which is a local affiliate of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. Each of these entities disagree with Romney in principle, and said as much until they received $10,000+ from the candidate. Now they sing his praises.

Maybe this is how politics is practiced by the very wealthy. In the end, though, not even Romney has enough money to buy off everybody.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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