Sign Of Things To Come? Major Democrat Donors Shifting Donations To Republicans

The “movers and shakers” of Washington DC have apparently seen the light. Well connected PAC’s, even those connected to Clinton and Obama, have started shifting money to the right:

Major political action committees and employees of the nation’s largest business empires have dramatically shifted their money to the right. A detailed analysis of 2010 campaign cycle contributions by the Houston Chronicle shows that Republicans are catching up with Senate Democrats in campaign fundraising. Donations to the Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)-led Senate Democratic Campaign Committee (DSCC) have dropped 25 percent this year alone.

“Employees of 126 businesses that had donated money to Senate Democrats in the 2008 campaign have switched all or most of their 2010 contributions to the Republicans, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission reports by the Houston Chronicle,” Stewart Powell and Yang Wang report.

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“Tony Podesta is one of the best-connected rainmakers in the nation’s capital, with a web of personal contacts stretching back 42 years and six Democratic presidential candidates. His brother John was Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff and an adviser on President Barack Obama’s transition team,” the Chronicle reporters note. “But in an uncharacteristic twist this year, people at Tony Podesta’s powerhouse lobbying firm have chosen to donate $32,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee to help its chairman, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, wrest control of the Senate from the Democrats.”

Cornyn and his allies have convinced a quarter of the 478 active political action committees that gave to the DSCC in 2008 to cut or eliminate donations to Democrats this year.

They are laying their bets that Republicans will be the party they need to deal with after the midterms, and they have even started sending money towards the right aisle of the Senate. Is there a real shot at taking the Senate as well?

We shall see, I wouldn’t get too cocky just yet.

But news like the one below makes it a bit hard not to:

Daniel S. Loeb, the hedge fund manager, was one of Barack Obama’s biggest backers in the 2008 presidential campaign.

A registered Democrat, Mr. Loeb has given and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Democrats. Less than a year ago, he was considered to be among the Wall Street elite still close enough to the White House to be invited to a speech in Lower Manhattan, where President Obama outlined the need for a financial regulatory overhaul.

So it came as quite a surprise on Friday, when Mr. Loeb sent a letter to his investors that sounded as if he were preparing to join Glenn Beck in Washington over the weekend.

“As every student of American history knows, this country’s core founding principles included nonpunitive taxation, constitutionally guaranteed protections against persecution of the minority and an inexorable right of self-determination,” he wrote. “Washington has taken actions over the past months, like the Goldman suit that seem designed to fracture the populace by pulling capital and power from the hands of some and putting it in the hands of others.”

Over the weekend, the letter, with quotations from Thomas Jefferson, Ronald Reagan and President Obama, was forwarded around the circles of the moneyed elite, from the Hamptons to Silicon Valley. Mr. Loeb’s jeremiad illustrates how some of the president’s former friends on Wall Street and in business now feel about Washington.

Mr. Loeb isn’t the first Wall Streeter to turn on the president. Steven A. Cohen, founder of the hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors and a supporter of the Obama campaign, recently held a meeting with Republican candidates in his home in Greenwich, Conn., to strategize about the midterm elections, according to Absolute Return magazine.

Other onetime supporters, like Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, also feel burned by the Obama administration, people close to him say.

That the honeymoon between Washington and Wall Street has turned to bitter recriminations is not news, given that the administration had long pledged to revamp Wall Street regulation in the wake of a crisis that rattled the global financial system.

Less than two years ago, Democrats received 70 percent of the donations from Wall Street; since June, when the financial regulation bill was nearing passage, Republicans were receiving 68 percent of the donations, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group.

But what is surprising is that some of the president’s biggest supporters have so publicly derided his policies, even at the risk of hurting their ability to influence the party in the future. Issues like the carry-interest tax on private equity or the Volcker Rule have become personal.

And I have to wonder….why in hell did you idiots not see this in 2007-2008? We were screaming it from the hilltops, to no avail. And now….NOW….you’ve figured it out.

Great.

Better late than never I suppose.

“So long as our leaders tell us that we must trust them to regulate and redistribute our way back to prosperity, we will not break out of this economic quagmire,” Mr. Loeb wrote.

“Perhaps our leaders will awaken to the fact that free market capitalism is the best system to allocate resources and create innovation, growth and jobs,” he continued. “Perhaps too, a cloven-hoofed, bristly haired mammal will become airborne and the rosette-like marking of a certain breed of ferocious feline will become altered. In other words, we are not holding our breath.”

The CSM has an article out that details the possibilities of a Republican takeover:

In a new survey released Friday, a USA Today/Gallup poll shows voters more likely to pick a generic Republican over a Democrat for Congress by 53-40 percent, particularly if that candidate is a newcomer. “It appears that the best type of candidate to be this fall is a Republican challenger,” writes Gallup analyst Jeffrey Jones.

In another sign of danger ahead for Democrats, Gallup reports that minorities and young voters – a solid part of Obama’s base in 2008 – are unlikely to turn out in large numbers come November.

“In contrast to 2008, when whites and blacks were about equally likely to say they were giving ‘quite a lot of’ or ‘some’ thought to the presidential election, whites are much more likely than blacks to be thinking about the 2010 elections: 42 percent vs. 25 percent, a gap exceeding those from recent midterm elections,” according to Gallup’s Lydia Saad. “As a result, and because of the extraordinarily keen interest in the elections that conservative Republicans currently display, Republicans overall currently enjoy a 54 percent to 30 percent lead over Democrats in ‘thought given to the election’.”

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, sees it this way:

“Conditions have deteriorated badly for Democrats over the summer. The economy appears rotten, with little chance of a substantial comeback by November 2nd. Unemployment is very high, income growth sluggish, and public confidence quite low. The Democrats’ self-proclaimed ‘Recovery Summer’ has become a term of derision, and to most voters – fair or not – it seems that President Obama has over-promised and under-delivered.”

At the moment, Sabato predicts, “Republicans have a good chance to win the House by picking up as many as 47 seats, net.” In the Senate, he writes on his web site, “Republicans have an outside shot at winning full control (+10), but are more likely to end up with +8 (or maybe +9, at which point it will be interesting to see how senators such as Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and others react).”

Conditions are ripe. The tea party has swept the country. True conservatism is on the rise.

Now, the question is…can the Republican party take the handoff without fumbling.

Curt

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