David Corn: This May Be the Worst GOP Fundraising Letter Ever

[babylonsister]

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/12/this-may-be-the-worst-gop-fundraising-letter-ever/


14 hours ago
This May Be the Worst GOP Fundraising Letter Ever
A special shout out to Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy.
David Corn
Washington, DC, Bureau ChiefBio | Follow

snip//

There’s nothing new about this. The far-right began pioneering this scare-’em-and-shake’em-down tactic with direct-mail fundraising in the 1960s that grew out of Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign. In the 1970s, Richard Viguerie, who had become the right’s direct-mail king, was raising millions of dollars a year for an assortment of New Right organizations by developing massive mailing lists and targeting small-donor conservatives with fundraising letters delivered through the postal service. (He’s still at it today.) As Terry Dolan, the founder of the National Conservative Political Action Committee and a key New Right player, observed in the late 1970s, “The shriller you are, the better it is to raise money.” The solicitations Viguerie zapped out for NCPAC and other groups, Dolan noted, were aimed to “make them angry” and “stir up hostilities.” Howard Phillips, a former Nixon administration official who became a key figure in the New Right, described the approach succinctly: “Organize discontent. That is our strategy.”

snip//

Hmmm, I thought, I wonder where this will lead? The answer? Nowhere, actually. The email began, “I have hope for my Liberal friends…jellyfish have survived for more than 165 million years without a brain, so there is hope for a few of them.” And…that was the pitch. There was no (phony) argument over any issue. Nothing like the liberals are ruining our schools and want to outlaw hamburgers! Or now they’re trying to cancel Mr. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss. Nor was there a reference to anything in the news: Not inflation, vaccine mandates, or supply chain problems. The only thing this missive contained was a playground taunt: liberals are really stupid. “If you are on my team,” Kennedy wrote, “and have a brain, unlike the DC Radicals, then I’m asking for a quick donation to get us situated for this month.”

snip//

Kennedy’s “jellyfish” email doesn’t bother presenting a cogent case. You hate liberals. I am a US Senator and will call them names. You will give me money. Rinse, repeat. It hardly gets more infantile and tribal than that and embodies lots that’s terrible about today’s Trumpified GOP. After all, Kennedy is a stalwart member of the slash-burn-and-insult club. You might recall that last month during a Senate confirmation hearing for Saule Omarova, President Joe Biden’s Soviet-born pick to be comptroller of the currency, Kennedy snidely said, “I don’t know whether to call you professor or comrade.”

But let’s return to jellyfish. It is true they have no centralized nerve center that can be called a brain. Instead, they possess two nervous systems. One network controls swimming; the other is in charge of everything else. “Jellies are like the original computer networks, with little servers all along the margin of their body that they use cooperatively,” Rebecca Helm, a researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, told PBS’ Nature. “They have a net of cooperative nerve bundles that talk to each other.” Given that jellyfish have been around for more than an estimated 500 million years—pre-dating dinosaurs by about 250 million years—they certainly show that you don’t need a sophisticated and well-developed brain to succeed. And if you were adopting the fundraising tactics of Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, you might say the same of him.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

1. Part of the psychology is to make the recipient feel superior....to something.

So, "in order to help me protect your superiority, you must send us your hard-earned money."

It's all about divide-and-conquer and enriching themselves....

Piss off, Sen. Kennedy of Louisiana.

[RussBLib]

2. he is a horrible person

and that fake southern drawl only makes him more insulting.

[BlueTsunami2018]

3. It works. That's why they do it.

They know they can’t win an honest debate on issues and enflaming emotions is a time tested path to victory. You milk that cow until it’s dry.

[BootinUp]

4. I think its always useful to cover the history

and I should probably read the whole piece.

[gratuitous]

5. 165 million years, Senator?

Surely you mean 6,000 years, don't you? Or are you denying the literal truth of the Bible? Do your supporters know about that???

[Progressive Jones]

7. There is more truth in a comic book. nt

[SergeStorms]

6. Trump already has most of their money.

There's still the big corporate dollars, of course, but all the small donors have been grifted clean by Mango Mussolini.

[underpants]

8. That's some serious projection there. Great read.

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