Not One Dime Goes National

Imagine my surprise when, after reading Howard Kurtz’ excellent profile of Jeff Jarvis in the first half of his lengthy column today, I scrolled down to see that he had linked CQ and the Not One Dime campaign. Kurtz quoted my post explaining the effort without comment, except to say that I have called for a financial boycott of GOP leadership.
For those who may come here for the first time from Kurtz’ link, the Not One Dime campaign urges people to withhold donations to the National Republican Senatorial Campaign until they eliminate the judicial filibusters and get President Bush’s nominations an up-or-down vote in the floor of the Senate. The NRSC raised millions of dollars from Republican voters by promising that judicial confirmations would be their highest domestic priority, but then after winning an eleven-seat majority, incomprehensibly dawdled for months before addressing the issue. That delay allowed the opposition to paint the effort to return to the 214-year tradition of majority rule on judicial confirmations as “extremist” and created the environment for the Seven Dwarves to betray their election-year promise to guarantee fair treatment to the judges nominated to the federal appellate bench.
The Not One Dime campaign does not encourage people to vote for Democrats or to withhold funds for all GOP candidates. It specifically targets the NRSC, as that typically comes under the control of the Senate GOP leadership — the same leadership that showed so little backbone and had to be forced by grassroots activists to finally start working on the nominations. We want people to save their money to contribute directly to those Republicans who don’t sacrifice the Constitution in the name of maintaining the clubbiness of the Senate. The money that goes to the NRSC maintains the current leadership in their positions of power, as incumbent Senators have to remain loyal to this failed management team in order to get their funding. No doubt some of the NRSC money would also wind up in the campaigns of the Seven Dwarves, and I for one will not ever contribute to their campaigns again for any reason.
Some who have questioned this effort claim that by attacking the NRSC and current Senate leadership, we will be cutting off our nose to spite our faces, a point Timothy Goddard graphically registered with a tongue-in-cheek logo submission. In response, I would ask people to assess where we stand in relation to the priorities that the GOP set at the election and at the beginning of the session. They’ve porked up the highway bill, gone nowhere on Social Security, and have caved into the Democrats on the issue that they claimed as their highest domestic priority and used for generating millions of dollars in contributions. Asking for even more money to win a larger majority, as I pointed out before, is analogous to buying your dog a Cadillac when you discover he can’t drive your Dodge Neo.
The problem isn’t the car, people. It’s the dog driving it.
Don’t forget about our logo contest for the Not One Dime campaign. I’ve received a number of submissions now, and I’m hoping to start posting a sampling of them in the next couple of days. The new URL for NOD is now active — www.notonedimemore.org — which for the moment just leads back here. Make your feelings known when the NRSC asks for your money; either contribute nine cents, or nothing at all, with an explanation why they won’t see any more from you until they fulfill their election pledges or elect leadership that can.