Ron Paul’s ‘Bomb’ plot - Fundraising gone wild?
Ron Paul and his campaign have been under the microscope lately for a wide variety of reasons. Interestingly, little has been said about Paul’s preferred fundraising method, the “money bomb”.
What is a “money bomb”?
The phrase “money bomb” has had other usages in the past, but the coinage of “moneybomb” or “money bomb” to describe a coordinated mass donation drive for a political candidate came to prominence in 2007, during the campaign of American presidential candidate Ron Paul with the help of his technology team, Terra Eclipse.His supporters initiated multiple grassroots fundraising drives; New York City musician Jesse Elder is said to have coined the usage of “moneybomb” for such an event and active-duty service member Eric Nordstrom registered the dotcom domain on October 16 and designed the first moneybomb site. A large moneybomb involving over 35,000 donors was created and proposed by James Sugra on Oct 14th through a YouTube video and organized by Trevor Lyman took place on November 5, 2007, Guy Fawkes Day. The fundraising drive raised over $4.2 million in one day, making it at that time the largest one-day Internet political fundraiser ever, and was backed largely by new or disaffected voters. After this, news media such as CNN began widely reporting the term “money bomb” to refer to the event. The term has also been used as a verb and apparently arose from analogy with the neologism “googlebomb”.
In an announcement of a December 2011 money bomb, the campaign decided to take credit for starting the Tea Party movement…in 2007,
The Ron Paul 2012 campaign is throwing itself behind a grass roots organized fundraising drive today, encouraging supporters to donate to reach a total of $4 million in one day.
On this day exactly four years ago, Paul set a new all time record for fundraising by drawing more than $6.4 million in a 24 hour period.
Owing to the banker induced financial implosion, the campaign does not realistically expect to break that record this time around, yet it is still aiming high.The 2007 ‘money bomb’ was held to mark the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party in 1773, and has widely been acknowledged as the inception of what was to become more popularly known as the Tea Party movement.
Paul’s campaign ran Money Bombs for the 2008 campaign and amazingly, has run FIVE in the past 6 months including a current effort in South Carolina. A banner ad for that money bomb here on LGF is what led me to post this page.
The campaign seems to be getting even more aggressive in trying to get people to hand their money over to Ron Paul. Here’s the notice from the main page for the South Carolina effort:
As we look ahead to the next primary, South Carolina, I hope I can count on you to rise to the challenge once again.
Dedicated staff and volunteers in South Carolina have been working around the clock for victory, but they’ll need all the reinforcement I can give them in these final days before voters head to the polls.
Our campaign is fueled by active duty military, small business owners, stay-at-home moms, students fighting to keep their dreams alive, workers who long to finally get out from under Big Labor’s thumb, and other everyday Americans who just want a government that sticks to the Constitution.
That’s why we need to make the January 14th South Carolina Money Bomb a massive success.
I hope you’ll pledge to contribute as generously as you can AND commit to calling at least three of your friends to urge them to contribute, as well!
John Tate
Campaign Manager
Ron Paul 2012
In other words: Show me the money!
As aggressive as these tactics are…it would appear they are working.
He seems to pull in between $1.5 million and $4 million with everyone of these. I get that these kind of fundraising events are par for the course as far as politics are concerned, but it really does underline the insane amount of money you need to run for major elected office in this country.
Another article I pulled up noted that the amount of fundraising doesn’t often equate to votes, much like a Sports team General Manager can load his squad up with expensive talent and not necessarily be guaranteed a championship.
Personally, I find these kind of fundraising tactics somewhat off-putting.