🚀 go-pugleaf

"Robin*" <springs809@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:Vm108.25309$Vz3.2592926@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
>
> "Bill Lindemann" <wcl@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
> news:3C3FA2FA.4000908@ix.netcom.com...
> > Robin* wrote:
> >
> > > To quote the origonal post, "... it is only fitting that the
candidates
> with
> > > the most cash should win".
> > >
> > > This inplies Bill Gates will be a lock if he ever decides to run for
> public
> > > office.
> > >
> > > If Ross Perot gets stomped, and Steve Forbes doesn't even make it to
the
> > > primaries, then obviously money has little to with winning an
election.
> >
> >
> > The original statement failed to include any observations about the
> > peculiar dynamics of third-party candidacy in America.  If it had
> > done so, it would have been quite undeniably true.  Certainly it
> > is true that, for major-party candidates (Democrat & Republican) money
> > talks.  And I think it is still valid in general if one adds to the
> > numbers the non-monetary clout of the major party organization, which
> > of course itself is bought with copious "soft money" donations.  If
> > Perot or Forbes had spent more money than Bush,
>
> You're assuming Perot and Forbes did *not* out spend Bush.  If they
didn't,
> it wasn't for lack of money.
>
>
> > plus an additional
> > increment to offset the lack of name recognition or the support of
> > a vast party organization, they probably would have won instead.
> > Money has *everything* to do with getting elected.
>
> Not true. Voters tend to vote a party line, or for the candidate they most
> agree with, not the one who is richest, or who spent more money.

Where your theory fails is when it is applied to the primaries. If two
repubs are battling it out to be their party's candidate then in almost
every case the candidate who spent the most money wins. When it comes to a
third party candidate or even an underdog like Forbes battling for inclusion
an inequity exists because the third party candidate does not have the
worker base and political machinery of the two established parties and
someone like Forbes certainly doesn't have the same access to it as say Bush
did. For either one to approximate the dollars a main party candidate spends
they would have to spend a lot more.