President (To Win Colorado) See Full Big Line

(D) Kamala Harris

(R) Donald Trump

80%↑

20%

CO-01 (Denver) See Full Big Line

(D) Diana DeGette*

(R) V. Archuleta

98%

2%

CO-02 (Boulder-ish) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Neguse*

(R) Marshall Dawson

95%

5%

CO-03 (West & Southern CO) See Full Big Line

(R) Jeff Hurd

(D) Adam Frisch

50%

50%

CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado) See Full Big Line

(R) Lauren Boebert

(D) Trisha Calvarese

90%

10%

CO-05 (Colorado Springs) See Full Big Line

(R) Jeff Crank

(D) River Gassen

80%

20%

CO-06 (Aurora) See Full Big Line

(D) Jason Crow*

(R) John Fabbricatore

90%

10%

CO-07 (Jefferson County) See Full Big Line

(D) B. Pettersen

(R) Sergei Matveyuk

90%

10%

CO-08 (Northern Colo.) See Full Big Line

(D) Yadira Caraveo

(R) Gabe Evans

52%↑

48%↓

State Senate Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

80%

20%

State House Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

95%

5%

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
November 07, 2017 02:10 PM UTC

GOP Donors Close Their Wallets, Like Cory Gardner Said

  • 6 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
Don’t you wish, Cory.

Vox’s Dylan Scott reports on a most revealing moment of candor from GOP Rep. Chris Collins of New York:

The House Republican tax overhaul has already made a lot of enemies.

Moderate Republicans from New York and New Jersey worry their constituents would lose big if they can no longer deduct their state and local taxes from their federal tax bill — one of the key ways Republicans are hoping to pay for the corporate tax cut at the center of the plan. Outside groups on the right, like Club for Growth, also object to the bill, saying that taxes for millionaires should be cut even more. Outside estimates project that millions of middle-class Americans could end up paying higher taxes.

Yet the bill is still expected to pass…

Why? Consider this comment from Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY), one of those New York Republicans who theoretically might be upset that his constituents would be expected to lose under the GOP bill.

Rep. Collins’ remarks as reported by Christina Marcos of The Hill are a close paraphrase of what Sen. Cory Gardner, head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told fellow Senators during the health care fight:

Mr. Gardner is in charge of his party’s midterm re-election push, and he warned that donors of all stripes were refusing to contribute another penny until the struggling majority produced some concrete results.

“Donors are furious,” one person knowledgeable about the private meeting quoted Mr. Gardner as saying. “We haven’t kept our promise.”

It’s acknowledged with varying degrees of frankness among Republicans that the failure to accomplish any part of the 2016 GOP agenda other than small and controversial actions by the administration is doing frightful political damage to the party with each passing day. It’s a bizarre situation, in which the party in unchallenged control of every branch of the federal government is suddenly paralyzed by the consequences of what they’ve promised for years–but are only now in a position to deliver. Now, all those harsh policy prescriptions so useful for firing up the right-wing electorate look like career-enders as Americans who cheered on “smaller government” began to understand what that means for themselves personally. The result is a tiny but highly influential Republican donor base fully indoctrinated by the promises conservatives have made outraged that elected Republicans in total control over the government won’t keep them.

The fact that these promises cannot be responsibly kept is beside the point. Republicans now face the politically nightmarish choice of betraying either their wealthy donors or the rest of the country. And there are just not enough rich people to win elections by themselves.

How do you bridge this gap between a platform of political fantasy and reality? Damned if we know, folks.

Comments

6 thoughts on “GOP Donors Close Their Wallets, Like Cory Gardner Said

  1. There's more than enough money for the boys.  They just aren't looking far enough beyond the horizon. 

    Offshore cash helped fund Steve Bannon's attacks on Hillary Clinton

    Leaked documents and newly obtained public filings show how the billionaire Mercer family built a $60m war chest for conservative causes inside their family foundation by using an offshore investment vehicle to avoid US tax.

    The offshore vehicle was part of a network of companies in the Atlantic tax haven of Bermuda led by Robert Mercer, the wealthy hedge-fund executive and Bannon patron whose spending helped put Trump in the White House and aided a resurgence of the Republican right.

    Mercer, 71, appears as a director of eight Bermuda companies in the Paradise Papers, a trove of millions of leaked documents on offshore finance reviewed by the Guardian, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other partners. The files include a copy of Mercer’s US passport and other private data.

    Some of the Bermuda companies appear to have been used to legally avoid a little-known US tax of up to 39% on tens of millions of dollars in investment profits amassed by the Mercer family’s foundation, which funded Bannon’s book and a who’s who of conservative groups, along with a $475m retirement fund for the staff of Mercer’s hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies.

Leave a Comment

Recent Comments


Posts about

Donald Trump
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Lauren Boebert
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Yadira Caraveo
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado House
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado Senate
SEE MORE

166 readers online now

Newsletter

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay in the loop with regular updates!