I am not what you would call a wealthy or frequent Republican donor. There was a time when I would toss the Republican National Committee a few bucks — a very few, mind you — every year and they would treat me as if I were sending them $1000 a month. I gave that up when the Romney fiasco happened. On the rare occasions that I do donate anything these days, I usually give it directly to a candidate.
For the most part, I had been a blissful non-donor for several years until the summer of 2018 and the Kavanaugh kangaroo court confirmation hearings began. This was also the first year that the various Republican entities — the RNC, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the National Republican Congressional Committee — began sending me fundraising text messages in earnest.
The unholy convergence of texts and Kavanaugh hearings got to me and I gave one of them some money one day when the Democrats had reached what I thought was rock-bottom at the time.
MY BAD.
That opened the floodgates. My number was then sold to every Republican fundraising entity in the country. For the past two years, my phone has been inundated with pitches for money. I haven’t donated any since 2018, but that hasn’t slowed down the pace of the requests, which has gotten a bit insane now that we are in an election year. Again, one would think I hemorrhaged cash for political causes given how often I get hit up for it.
It’s generally easy enough to ignore these things and I don’t usually give them much thought.
The seemingly-constant pleas for money haven’t let up at all since the beginning of the Wuhan Chinese Bat Flu stay-at-home festival. This has been bothering me quite a bit.
Yes, I get that it is still an election year and money is needed but we’re in a bit of a weird place now, are we not? We are a nation in the midst of a crisis that is putting millions of Americans out of work. The optics of a relentless fundraising push when so many are worried about their financial futures are really, really, awful, to say the least. While reading stories all day about the dire straits so many are in every day, I’m getting an almost steady stream of tone-deaf texts from the Republicans asking for money.
Every. Single. Day.
It’s not just texts; the snail mail keeps showing up too. I understand that all of that was in motion before the plague began shutting us down, and therefore more difficult to curtail.
The texts, however, would be easy to slow down, if not temporarily suspend for a while.
At the very least, the texts could acknowledge the current situation, and explain that they understand not everyone is in a position to give. Anything to take the clueless level down a notch.
This would be a good time to exhort those who can give to give to charities that are helping those most in need right now.
I’m fortunate that I have plenty of work right now, so it’s not as if I am personally offended by any of this. I can’t imagine getting five or six of these texts a day if I were out of work right now.
It’s not a good look. An adult in the room would be nice.
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PJ Media Senior Columnist and Associate Editor Stephen Kruiser is the author of “Don’t Let the Hippies Shower” and “Straight Outta Feelings: Political Zen in the Age of Outrage,” both of which address serious subjects in a humorous way. Monday through Friday he edits PJ Media’s “Morning Briefing.”
