Pages

November 08, 2012

Will #wingnut #SuperPAC dineros ‘buy’ a #NateSilver type?

Wingnut Daddy Warbucks Sheldon Adelson and his wife,
Miriam, in February. And, what is it with rich conservatives
and horrible hair?/New York Times photo.
The New York Times, and others, are reporting that the Koch Bros. and other gazillionaires with their SuperPACs largely failed to influence the elections.

Columbia Journalism Review, which before the election was having wingnut troll commenters hit every post, saysmore of the same.

But, that said, just because Romney didn’t win, was the money so illy spent? Not necessarily.

In fact, looking beyond the presidential race, from wingnuts’ perspective, some money may already have been well spent.

The Citizens’ United ruling by the Supreme Court came down the pike early enough to have some influence on 2010 elections, not just for Congress, but state governments. That, in turn, being a decadal election, influenced state redistricting efforts.

And, if one looks beyond the presidential and U.S. Senate chess boards, House races Tuesday night have made Congressional Republicans even more wingnut and tea partier than the current Congress.

SuperPACs can fund other things. That includes lobbyists for redistricting at the state level.
And, if you pay more money for better software, and better analysis to feed the software, on gerrymandering, you get districts that favor incumbents even more. Democrats aren't excused, but the GOP seems to practice this more.

And, back to CJR and troll spam. I speculated that, just maybe, SuperPACs were paying people to comment there. If true, and if presidentially disappointed wingnuts double down in 2014, watch out.

And, there’s other ways Koch Bros. and others could redouble their efforts.

They already tried to do “spinning” pushback against polling analyst Nate Silver of 528 blog fame. And, speaking of spin, Silver noted, just before election day, than on online outcomes-betting websites, Romney had much better odds at Intrade than at other sites like Betfair, and wondered what was up with that.

But, speaking of Silver, here’s something else that could play out.

Remember a few years ago, the “scandal” about bloggers like Armstrong Williams getting paid by wingnuts? Why aren't the wingnuts’ moneybags “finding” Nate Silver-types who will take a few dinero, do a wingnut-pomo blend of snazzy language to hide "lying with stats" and going from there?

Yes, Real Clear Politics already exists, but it’s just a bit slanted, not “in the tank.” I’m talking the SuperPACs applying Big Tobacco/Climate Denial tactics and funding to polling analysis.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Your comments are appreciated, as is at least a modicum of politeness.
Comments are moderated, so yours may not appear immediately.
Due to various forms of spamming, comments with professional websites, not your personal website or blog, may be rejected.