In catching up to Power Line on my lunch break, I noticed that Deacon posted a comment from one of their readers I found provocative. Stan Brown asks a very pertinent question:

"Kerry and his attack dogs (which include the news media of course) state as if it were a proven fact that Bush orchestrated the Swift Vet attack. But where is all the money? If Bush is connected to so many rich Republican fat cats, why couldn't the Swift Vets raise any more money than they have? If Karl Rove really had been the evil master mind behind the whole Swift Vet campaign, he certainly should have been capable of raising millions of dollars from his fat cat donors. Or are Rove and Bush so brilliant that they knew they could cause Kerry to self-destruct while spending a mere pittance?"

Obviously, Stan's argument rightly demonstrates the laughable idea that Republicans would have left such a critical campaign piece so woefully underfunded. However, just for fun, let's assume that both candidates have used the 527s deliberately as proxies for running attacks on each other in order to claim some distance from negative campaigning. What can we deduce from the result?

* John Kerry and the Democrats have spent over $60 million dollars in 527 money over eight months or more to derail the Bush re-election bid. The result -- Bush, a figure of hatred on the left, has suffered a few points of job-approval erosion, most of which has been regained in the past month.

* George Bush and the Republicans have spent $250,000 in 527 money over the past three weeks in order to attack Kerry. The result -- John Kerry has had to retreat from three different assertions of his Viet Nam record, he's hiding from the press, he's begging George Bush to stop the ads, and now he's calling veterans from his unit asking why they despise him.

Heck ... just on the basis of wise money management and bang for my buck, I'd have to vote Republican. They've gotten far more out of their investment, 0.5% of the Democrats' bill, than the Kerry campaign has from theirs. Why reward incompetence?

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» The Swiftee's have been far more effective with far less because what they are saying is true... from The Pink Flamingo Bar Grill
Truth is a powerful weapon, especially when it is directed against a person so willing to distort reality. John Kerry has suffered so terribly because he has spent so much of his life living a lie. He lied when he claimed to be wounded by enemy fire fo... [Read More]

Tracked on August 24, 2004 5:20 PM