Nikki Haley to launch $10m ad campaign in bid to overtake Ron DeSantis in GOP fight

I'd love to get money out of politics. Make political advertising illegal. Give candidates a web site to post their resume. That's it. No more tv, radio, magazine, web, or newspaper campaign ads.

This shit is obscene.

A two month campaign season would help. Political donations may only occur between Labor Day and Election Day. No donations, fundraisers, or campaigning may occur before or after those dates.
- As long as we're making a wishlist, I'll also take a spending max for the main campaign combined with any supporting PAC (i.e. no shell PACs pretending to be regular citizens supporting a candidate on their own dime). No more billionaire bankrolling to simply outspend the average person.
- The trouble with a time-limted campaign is that it's a big country, and politics are local. You'd basically hamstring every candidate who does not have a national profile.
  
  Nationally funded campaigns are the best path to getting money out of politics. Money isn't speech, and donations to candidates should be entirely illegal. If anyone wants to run issue ads, that's fine, make your case to the American public and disclose the source of the funds. But endorsing a specific candidate is quid pro quo bribery.
  
  Each state funds its own events, and qualifying candidates get a stipend for travel and lodging. No staff, no speech writers, just the candidates and their ideas. Show up, make your case, move on to the next state. 50 debates would cost a tiny fraction of what we spend now, and it would be our money buying it.
  
  There are a thousand kinks in our electoral process, from balloting to gerrymandering to disenfranchisement, but none of it gets fixed while the process is inherently corrupted by legal bribery.
- Campaigns for public office should be limited to evenly distributed funds to all candidates with routine audits and disbursement windows to start the campaign season at the right time and prevent electoral burnout. This would also remove corporate backers like oil and military weapons for paying to win an election by burying their opponents through outspending.
  
  Anytime a democracy let's money decide who speaks, it let's the richest say what they want while everyone else has to listen. A democracy which treats each candidate the same is the one which elects the best leaders.
Outlaw fundraising, give every candidate that can get enough signatures $20,000 to run for office, let them compete on ideas, give each candidate the same amount of air time on TV. I think Japan does something like this.
The issue I could see with this is that political groups would have a very strong incentive to get around this and would try to push the limits of it. For example, if advertising about specific candidates is made illegal, groups might make ads promoting or attacking certain political positions instead, as a proxy for the candidates. If you make political advertising for anything illegal, even if not mentioning a specific candidate, then it would get even more thorny, because almost anything can be a political issue. For example, some right-wing political group might try to claim that gay marriage is a political issue and that any depiction of it in media is therefore advertising a stance on it, and sue anyone showing such on those grounds to try to silence people they don't like.

Finally, political groups might just buy ads using organizations based outside the country, or use the advertising money instead on hiring people to go on social media and shill for their preferred candidates or positions, having the same effect as advertising without actually running ads.

$10M to get to second place in a winner take all contest? This is the kind of brain we need running the country. /s

This is perhaps the first contest where the winner may be in prison and may not be able to legally or politically "win".
- Winner is also 77, unhealthy, and going through a very stressful period of his life. Probably a decent chance of him dying of a heart attack or something.
- 10m at a chance to win by default basically.
The only way any of them still make any sense running is if they assume that Trump is going to be dead or in prison by next year.
- Vivek's entire brown-nosing campaign is just a VP audition.
Conservatives in a nutshell

Stop trying to make Nikki Haley happen. She's not gonna happen.

She's better than the other chucklefucks on the Republican debate stages.

Would you really rather Trump or DeSantis if it was inevitable that a Republican wins the presidency?

Plus, if she gets the Republican nomination, it's very likely Biden becomes a shoe-in because Trump would either be disqualified or running as an independent (which would really split Republican voters).
- If it's inevitable, sure. But it's by far not inevitable. I'd rather take my chances against Trump, because Biden has already shown able to beat him and Trump would rally the democratic base to vote more than if Haley were running. If republicans have realized this, they're smart to swap their focus to a new nominee.
She will be the VP or front runner depending on if Trump goes to jail.
- Repubs won't vote a woman in to the White House. Especially if she's currently trailing DeSantis who has become a joke candidate.
  
  They do not have a legitimate contender outside of Trump. Which is ridiculous considering who the opponent will be.

In the race to be the next person 40 points behind Trump? 🤔

The GOP base is way too racist AND sexist to ever make her the nominee.

Imagine spending $10,000,000 of someone else's money to maybe win a distant second place in the Republican Primary against a guy who can only be described as a meatball on stilts.

Imagine donating $10,000,000 to someone to maybe win a distant second place in the Republican Primary against a guy who can only be described as Meatwad on stilts.
- More proof we should tax the rich into penury
- Why do you have to insult Meatwad like that?
Meatwad is funny and cute. Trump is neither. If Trump is like any of the ATHF he's Shake.
- "Dancing is forbidden!" - DJT
- I was actually talking about DeSantis, but you're 100% right and I have defamed Meatwad's character.

lol. Trump’s her daddy. She just can’t accept it.

She's the honest to God candidate that could beat Biden.

I don't like her, but she's rational and proven that she's capable.

I will never vote for her, but the polling agrees with you. She is the strongest in a match up against Biden.

edit: The polls have been pretty consistent that Haley is strongest against Biden. Here is one example. If that still makes you want to push the downvote button, then you have no right to accuse rightwingers of mindless tribalism.
- Lol we are getting down voting for speaking the truth.
  
  Fucking people only want to hear/read what they want the narrative to be. Fuck reality.
Capable as a campaigner, but I wouldn't go so far as to call her rational.
- Eh her take on the logistics of abortion law, while I disgree with her, is spot on. Anything else is delusional. You can't get a bill through the senate without 60 votes.
I think they are hoping Trump goes to jail and try to push a "moderate". I bet Scott's exit is probably a deal to make him VP if Haley gets the nom.
- Eh, likely not vp. Two people from the same state would do nothing to help the ticket Perhaps some cabinet level position

Nimarata Nikki Randhawa isn't going anywhere. A woman, one off from an immigrant won't even have solid MAGA support, assuming the lead insurrectionist is doing time.

I think a lot of people lack imagination about what can happen between now and the primaries/general. Trump could be found guilty for numerous crimes. He could go to jail. He could lose his money and properties in that civil trial. He is also an old man that could get dementia, be diagnosed with cancer, or suddenly die of natural causes. If he is suddenly out of the running, being second is very valuable.

“But for most of those events, people will support him anyways!” Maybe. This is all unprecedented. I don’t know where people get their level of certainty from.

You act like they wouldn’t vote for his corpse
- I think you misunderstand me. I am not "acting like" anything is certain. I am explicitly endorsing uncertainty. One of the things I fucking hate about the internet is all the insane confidence, and groupthink around that confidence. If it later turns out he loses, a bunch of people will come out and say, "I always thought that. I don't think anyone thought he would win from jail." and I'll want to scratch out my eyes.
  
  Some definitely will never abandon him. He has a high floor. But he needs support from more than his rabid base to dominate the primaries like he has. Will moderate suburban Republicans also support him from jail? If you're confident about predicting that, the prediction is based on no historical data because it's unprecedented.

Imagine using that $10 million to idk, help people?

🤷‍♂️

Nope, lemme stroke my ego and plaster my face on TV and Pop-up ads

That's a lot to pay to try and pick up Tim Scott's 15 supporters and Pence's seven.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign will reserve $10m in television, radio and digital advertising across Iowa and New Hampshire beginning in the first week of December, a massive investment designed to give the former UN ambassador an advantage over the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, at a critical moment in the GOP nomination fight.

DeSantis stands as Haley’s strongest competition for her party’s second-place slot, although the Florida governor’s campaign has shown signs of financial strain after a tumultuous summer.

Rival campaigns are betting that if they can emerge as the main alternative to Trump, they can consolidate enough support to mount a strong challenge against him or replace him if he falters.

Trump faces four criminal indictments, including a case focusing on his efforts to overturn his 2020 general election defeat in Georgia and another on felony charges for working to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the violent January 6 2021 riot by his supporters at the US Capitol.

The South Carolina senator Tim Scott, whose allied Super Pac had booked $7.5m in ads through Iowa’s 15 January caucuses, dropped out of the race late on Sunday.

“The same can’t be said for Ron DeSantis, who, even with a decent showing in Iowa, can’t afford a cup of coffee at the Red Arrow diner in New Hampshire and is a mere tourist in South Carolina.”

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