into promoting their cause. Kochs, Mercers, Adelstein, Scaif when he was alive--They are billionaires, and they don't flinch at the cost of their crusade.
They have bought up broadcast media and some newspapers. The Mercers also fund Breitbart and have probably worked with the Russians (the Mercers own Cambridge Analytical) to use advanced data mining to microtarget lying propaganda and to mess with voter rolls to undermine election integrity. (I suspect they probably have hacked voting machines, too.)
RW moneybags also fund RW politicians and election ground troops, and they fund RW think tanks, to provide an endless supply of RW "experts" (mouths) to spew the party line on TV and radio and to produce articles and white papers that shape public discourse and policy.
Unlike more liberal donors, RW billionaires play the long game. They build political infrastructure, and they fill the pipeline with true believers in local and state offices, and nurture them to develop national stature to pursue national office.
Because they and their ground troops are fanatics, they don't lose interest or get distracted. Their voters vote, and they not only vote in every election, but always for the Republican candidate. They typically cannot be lured away by third-party pipedreams. Nor do they ditch their party's candidate for being less than perfect on a specific issue. Their voters accept that sometimes they must vote for someone they consider the "lesser of two evils."
And these guys fight dirty, dirty, dirty, while Democrats and liberals keep expecting there to be some limit to the viciousness, the ratf**king, the violation of basic decency, and the outright cheating.
We cannot keep showing up to these gunfights with granola bars and Robert's Rules. I don't want our side to turn evil or to cheat, but I wish we would scream as loudly as they do when our toes are stepped on, and I wish our "leaders" would look at the big picture and plan ahead instead of just reacting.
For example, our liberal rich people (though we have fewer of the super-rich, we do have some people on our side with money) should be funding media (and accepting, as RW moneybags do that they won't necessarily turn a profit), establishing and supporting think tanks and political ground organizations.
Above all, liberal money and liberal and Democratic officeholders should have long since been countering the wide variety of effective voter suppression tactics used by the RW, as well as insisting on hand-counted paper ballots in every election, with strict chain of custody observed for ballots.
Those with money and power on our side have been asleep at the wheel for decades while the RW has played the long game. I fear it might be too late to fix this mess, but I wish to hell they would try.
And they need to stop moving to the right and calling it the "center."
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