Maureen Groppe, writing for the Gannett News Service, has an article about Hoosier contributions to Presidential candidates. Of the $1.5 million Hoosiers donated, $267,000 went to Barack Obama. Giuliani was the top Republican recipient with $255,000. Hillary Clinton raised $246,000. John Edwards raised $201,000. Mitt Romney was the second highest Republican recipient with $195,000. And, John McCain came in 6th overall in Indiana with $120,000.
That’s pretty interesting that the top 3 Democratic candidates raised $722,000 while the top 3 Republican candidates raised $570,000. . . in Indiana. Hillary Clinton raised almost as much as the leading Republican while competing with significant numbers of dollars against Obama – in Indiana. Does George W. Bush just suck that bad or are the Republican candidates just that lackluster? Because, as a Hoosier, I can’t believe that Hillary is catching fire amongst the people of Indiana.
Maybe we’re all going on beyond the politics of personal destruction? As in a previous postings, Gore was sucessfully protrayed as a bungling fool in the 2000 campaign and GW The White Christian Knight,with a glib sense of humor (‘one of us’) but Gore has consistently been proven right and Bush has not been right about anything, has done nothing right,and his legacy has turned to dust. It makes people rethink maybe how we judge.The new question may be:how ‘bad’ could Hilary be compared to anyone else?
I think that many people just don’t care this early into the campaigns. And yes, the Republican candidates are just that lackluster. (If one of them truly stood out from the crowd, he or she would be able to overcome the “stink” of Bush). In Indiana, most of us realize that our primary is so late that the decision of the two candidates for president will likely be made by the time we vote. Why pump money into their primary war chests?
The numbers do surprise me, but then there’s not a lot of context. Perhaps Indiana’s Republican majority has always been cheap? I wonder what the numbers were like in previous year.
A Republican could only rise above Bush’s stink if he believed in something other than that in which Bush believes. Bush doesn’t suck merely because he’s incompetent. He sucks because he has bad ideas. Most national Republican politicians share his ideas. Ergo, they suck too.
T-
That’s exactly my point!
There has been a strong national trend for corporate donors and corporate executives to jump in early with donations to possible/probable office holders to gain visibility and a “seat at the table”. We may be seeing more of this than a huge change in heart on the part of the Hoosier in the street. The Indiana totals tilt far more strongly Republican than the national trend.