Pre-Emptive Money Bomb

[Matthew Zak]

Idea: Promise millions of dollars to a potential presidential candidate for 2012, who fully subscribes to the message of Liberty.

Purpose: To give them a huge advantage in both fundraising, and electability, as the buzz from said money bomb would thrust candidate of our choosing straight into the limelight.

Why it will work: A candidate starting his campaign with millions of dollars rather than building those funds quarterly will have several advantages. Furthermore, in the months, weeks, and days leading up to the money bomb, the media will be unable to resist speculating who is expected to receive the funds.

Why wouldn't this work?

[Matthew Zak]

Why not?

[MRoCkEd]

Because we will never raise millions of dollars for someone who isn't running.

[TNforPaul45]

And someone will come along from the GOP, promise to love liberty minded ideas, take the money, and then say OOPS IM A GLENN BECK DUR HURR and vote for killing people with constitutions in their back seats.

Next.

[Flash]

We could money bomb Ron Paul's congressional campaign in hope he will transfer that money to his 2012 run.

[Matthew Zak]

Because we will never raise millions of dollars for someone who isn't running.

But we know someone will run. And no one out there is better at combing through candidates to find the true liberty-minded folk than we are. Whether it's Ron or Rand Paul, or Gary Johnson, or some other Libertarian dark horse. Promising, and generating that much money even before someone officially announces their candidacy would create a lot of buzz, and start someone's campaign off on the right foot. It would eliminate the establishment's attempt at marginalizing them because they would already have the upper hand. And we wouldn't have to try to "keep up" with other candidates who have special interest/establishment support. That support would lean in our direction. Money talks. 5 or 10 million dollars screams.


And someone will come along from the GOP, promise to love liberty minded ideas, take the money, and then say OOPS IM A GLENN BECK DUR HURR and vote for killing people with constitutions in their back seats.

Next.

We wouldn't donate to or vote for someone like that. We will, as we do now, screen them thoroughly to make sure they are legit. We could even wait for Ron Paul to endorse them if he wasn't running himself.

The point is, generating that money EARLY, rather than sporadically through out the campaign, will give a candidate of OUR choosing a head start. Otherwise I am afraid we will have a repeat of 2008, where we barely register a blip on the national radar as we repeat old-hat money bombs in order to position ourselves against established candidates. I don't care how charming our liberty candidate is, if he isn't in the spotlight from the beginning, he will be marginalized and ignored. As Obama is re-elected we will retreat to our apathy, muttering, "Well it was all about 2016 anyway, go Rand!". Back to the drawing board. Well it's been two years since we went back to the drawing board the last time and I don't see any new ideas. We think NEXT TIME, based on the merits of LAST TIME, will be different. Are we crazy?

[Matthew Zak]

Why COULDN'T this work?

[erowe1]

Why COULDN'T this work?

Go ahead. If you're convinced it's a good idea, set up the website. See how it goes. I know I won't sign up. But maybe there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who don't think like me who will.

[TCE]

Why COULDN'T this work?

1. Politicians lie, it is their job.
2. What if they don't run? What is our recourse?
3. Where is the trust between us and them?
4. Where are you getting all of this money from all of these people?
5. Why donate to a campaign that won't start for another year when we have at least 8 good liberty candidates running right now who have a shot to win?

[Brad Zink]

You might want to think about your local elections rather than looking for a magic bullet at the national level.

Here's an idea: find local doctors in your area that are concerned about the government taking over the health care industry. That could be the basis for a Meetup group that could finance a candidate for your Congressional seat.