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Political Pros Fear Campaigns No Longer Matter

by Rush Limbaugh - Sep 28,2017

RUSH: Another interesting story here from Real Clear Politics: “Political Campaigning May Be Mostly Pointless.” What do you think this story is? Snerdley, you’re highly tuned to this kind of stuff. If you see that headline, “Political Campaigning May Be Mostly Pointless,” what’s this story about? It is about the fact that Hillary Clinton spent more money than anybody spent in the campaign and it didn’t get her a single vote, that Donald Trump didn’t spend a dime, and he won.

And so, again, this is the political establishment being flipped upside down. Money has always equaled victory. Whoever had more of it won. But what a research project has found is that TV ads in the last three weeks to a month leading up to an election were not persuasive in changing people’s minds how they were gonna vote.

And you know where I first saw this story? In an advertising magazine where they’re very, very afraid television and radio stations are gonna lose a lot of money because consultants are gonna figure out it’s wasted money. If spending on campaign ads three weeks out doesn’t change people’s minds, why spend it? Another example of how Donald Trump, outsider, has turned the establishment and its entire world upside down.

And they still don’t know why. And they don’t yet have the ability to be honest with themselves about why Hillary lost and why Trump won. And they keep getting news that shocks them and rocks their world, because the political world, like every other world, revolves around money. A huge spending campaign, do you realize how many people get wealthy off that before the money gets to the TV stations or radio stations where the advertising is bought? I mean, a lot of people get their mitts on that gross amount of money before it gets to the TV station, and if they stop spending it, a lot of money.

Do you know that your average presidential campaign manager, consultant, will get 15% of every dollar spent on advertising? That’s how they get rich. They get the advertising agency commission. So if a campaign advisor, David Axelrod, is telling Obama we need to spend a trillion dollars here in this election, he’s gonna get 15% of it.

Now, the number may float. Obama may say, “Axelrod, you’re only gonna get 10,” or George W. Bush may say, “Rove, you’re only gonna get eight,” whatever, but it averages outs to the agency commission, which is 15%. The more spent, the more campaign consultant, management, that’s how they get paid, whether the candidate wins or loses. Is another reason why ad buys are so big.


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