George Soros: "I quit"

[MODU]

"ANTI-W. $OROS: I QUIT POLITICS"

Billionaire liberal financier George Soros, who spent millions of his fortune trying to oust President Bush in 2004, yesterday said he hopes to stay out of politics from now on.

"In the future, I'd very much like to get disengaged from politics," Soros said at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting on the Upper East Side. "I'm interested in policy and not in politics."

-----

Hopefully this will be a lesson for anyone else who wants to BUY an election.

[Joe Republic]

Hopefully this will be a lesson for anyone else who wants to BUY an election.

Oh I don't know, it seems to have been working pretty well for the mega-rich Republican financiers so far.

[MODU]

Hopefully this will be a lesson for anyone else who wants to BUY an election.

Oh I don't know, it seems to have been working pretty well for the mega-rich Republican financiers so far.

I'm still waiting for the candidate to come forward and announce he will only accept funding from the individual contributor up to the maximum level they can donate (which is what, $2000 or something?).  I wonder how well that would play out during an election if they shunned all corporate, special interest, and any other large third-party donations from their campaigns.

[Nym90]

"ANTI-W. $OROS: I QUIT POLITICS"

Billionaire liberal financier George Soros, who spent millions of his fortune trying to oust President Bush in 2004, yesterday said he hopes to stay out of politics from now on.

"In the future, I'd very much like to get disengaged from politics," Soros said at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting on the Upper East Side. "I'm interested in policy and not in politics."

-----

Hopefully this will be a lesson for anyone else who wants to BUY an election.

What's the lesson to be learned? That you shouldn't try to pour massive amounts of money into political campaigns because you'll just end up not succeeding anyway, then quitting politics and perhaps suffereing a blow to your self-esteem as a result?

I understand what you are saying, but the point being he quit voluntarily.

In any event, I'm opposed to all wealthy folks putting undue influence on the election process regardless of their political affiliations, but I think that's something that's happened far more often from the right (directly and indirectly) than from the left.

In the long run the solution is publically funded campaigns and free air time for candidates. Let the election truly be a battle of ideas and not one of wealthy special interests.

[Alcon]

Hopefully this will be a lesson for anyone else who wants to BUY an election.

Oh I don't know, it seems to have been working pretty well for the mega-rich Republican financiers so far.

I'm still waiting for the candidate to come forward and announce he will only accept funding from the individual contributor up to the maximum level they can donate (which is what, $2000 or something?).  I wonder how well that would play out during an election if they shunned all corporate, special interest, and any other large third-party donations from their campaigns.

Probably not very well, really.  I mean, how likely would you be to swing your vote just based on that?  It's probably more effort than the end results would justify.  After all, it would entirely frame the campaign, but people would get sick of hearing about it.

[MODU]

Hopefully this will be a lesson for anyone else who wants to BUY an election.

Oh I don't know, it seems to have been working pretty well for the mega-rich Republican financiers so far.

I'm still waiting for the candidate to come forward and announce he will only accept funding from the individual contributor up to the maximum level they can donate (which is what, $2000 or something?).  I wonder how well that would play out during an election if they shunned all corporate, special interest, and any other large third-party donations from their campaigns.

Probably not very well, really.  I mean, how likely would you be to swing your vote just based on that?  It's probably more effort than the end results would justify.  After all, it would entirely frame the campaign, but people would get sick of hearing about it.

One could always hope. 

[muon2]

Hopefully this will be a lesson for anyone else who wants to BUY an election.

Oh I don't know, it seems to have been working pretty well for the mega-rich Republican financiers so far.

I'm still waiting for the candidate to come forward and announce he will only accept funding from the individual contributor up to the maximum level they can donate (which is what, $2000 or something?).  I wonder how well that would play out during an election if they shunned all corporate, special interest, and any other large third-party donations from their campaigns.

Probably not very well, really.  I mean, how likely would you be to swing your vote just based on that?  It's probably more effort than the end results would justify.  After all, it would entirely frame the campaign, but people would get sick of hearing about it.

The problem is in reaching a large audience, especially an audience that knows little about the person.

Suppose I had just invented great new formula for toothpaste. My local community would be enthusiastic, but the market would be pretty restricted to word-of-mouth advertising. If I wanted to challenge for a bigger market I would need to advertise on a broad scale that would reach enough people to justify the expense. Newspapers outside of my local area aren't going to give me free media time, less so for TV markets beyond those interested in the "local inventor" angle. A public stock offering may not grab much attention, so I go for a handful of venture capitalists to underwrite the first widescale ads.

Marketing a candidate is not dissimilar. One needs to get the message of the person out to a wide audience beyond a local base. There's no cheap, dependable way to do that.

[TomC]

Hopefully this will be a lesson for anyone else who wants to BUY an election.

Oh I don't know, it seems to have been working pretty well for the mega-rich Republican financiers so far.

I'm still waiting for the candidate to come forward and announce he will only accept funding from the individual contributor up to the maximum level they can donate (which is what, $2000 or something?).  I wonder how well that would play out during an election if they shunned all corporate, special interest, and any other large third-party donations from their campaigns.

Probably not very well, really.  I mean, how likely would you be to swing your vote just based on that?  It's probably more effort than the end results would justify.  After all, it would entirely frame the campaign, but people would get sick of hearing about it.

Well, if it were one aspect of "clean campaigning" drive, or one example of a candidate who touted him or herself as independent minded, it could make a difference. I know it would get my attention.

[nini2287]

Hopefully this will be a lesson for anyone else who wants to BUY an election.

Oh I don't know, it seems to have been working pretty well for the mega-rich Republican financiers so far.

I'm still waiting for the candidate to come forward and announce he will only accept funding from the individual contributor up to the maximum level they can donate (which is what, $2000 or something?).  I wonder how well that would play out during an election if they shunned all corporate, special interest, and any other large third-party donations from their campaigns.

Didn't Feingold do something like that in his last election?

[Joe Republic]

Correct, and so did Paul Wellstone.  Some others might have too, but I couldn't say.