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Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney: Who Funds Them?

Analysis

By Joe Romaine: Subscribe to Joe's RSS feed
December 9, 2011 3:54 PM EST
Comments 48

If you want to know the truth, follow the money. Or so says conventional wisdom.

The 2012 Republican presidential-nomination race is shaping up to be a three-man contest between Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney.

Paul’s support has steadily climbed. Romney is persistently the front-runner until the “flavor of the month” candidate displaces him. Gingrich may very well be the current “flavor of the month” candidate.

So who are they funded by? This question matters for two reasons. It betrays who the candidate would benefit because those individuals would presumably donate to the candidate. It may also betray who the candidates “owes” once he is elected.

Paul
48 percent from small individual contributions

Ron Paul for Congress Cmte, U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, Mason Capital Management, Microsoft, Boeing, Google, Overland Sheep, IBM*

Gingrich
43 percent from small individual contributions
Rock-Tenn Co, Poet LLC, First Fiscal Fund, Pull-A-Part Inc, Amway/Alticor Inc, State Mutual Insurance, American Fruits & Flavors, Streck Inc, Windway Capital, Wirco Inc*

Romney
10 percent from small individual contributions
Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse Group, Morgan Stanley, HIG Capital, Barclays, Kirkland & Ellis, Bank of America, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, EMC Corp, JPMorgan Chase*
*From OpenSecrets.org: The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organizations' PACs, their individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families.

Total Raised
Mitt Romney - $32 million
Ron Paul - $13 million
Newt Gingrich - $3 million

Discussion
Romney notably fails to attract the so-called “99 percent” and relies heavily on the so-called “1 percent.” Gingrich and Paul were more balanced.

Romney has by far the most money of any GOP presidential candidates. Paul is third. Gingrich is woefully behind at $3 million, placing him 8th behind the likes of Tim Pawlenty and Jon Huntsman. (OpenScecret.org’s data, however, ends on Sept. 30, 2011, which is before Gingrich’s surge that started in November.)

Romney is flooded with money from Wall Street, notably from Goldman Sachs.

Gingrich’s top contributor, Rock-Tenn, is a packaging company based in his home state of Georgia. His second highest contributor, Poet LLC, is the largest ethanol producer in the U.S.
Gingrich’s cozy relationship with Poet underscores his “deep ties to an industry whose government subsidies he has steadfastly defended even while running as a fiscal conservative,” according to USA Today.

Paul’s top contributors, interestingly, is the U.S. military. Paul is noted for his non-interventionist stance, promising to bring home U.S. troops stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan and all over the world.
This suggests that at least some members of the U.S. military support Paul’s position.

Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney: Who Funds Them? - International Business Times

Paul Won Majority of Youth Vote

Tuesday, 10 Jan 2012 09:41 PM
By Henry J. Reske

New Hampshire primary winner Mitt Romney topped his GOP opponents among those who consider themselves most conservative but fell far behind Rep. Ron Paul among the young; a group that helped propel President Barack Obama to victory in 2008.

Exit polls reported by CBS News showed that Romney grabbed 33 percent of the 21 percent of voters identified as very conservative, with Santorum at 26 percent, Rep. Paul at 18, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 17, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman at 5 and Texas Gov. Rick Perry at 1 percent.

Of the 9 percent of New Hampshire voters ages 18 to 24, Paul grabbed 47 percent of the vote with Romney at 26, Huntsman at 14, Santorum at 7 and Gingrich at 3.

Paul Won Majority of Youth Vote

Romney and McCain: The GOP Frenemies' Club

Michelle Malkin
Jan 11, 2012

Michael Corleone said to "keep your friends close, but your enemies closer." But what, pray tell, do we do with our frenemies? This is the awful election-year quandary of movement conservatives. And everything you need to know about our heartache can be summed up in one image: 2008 presidential election loser John McCain and Mitt Romney together on the campaign trail.

When they're together, they look like they're holding each other (and the rest of us) hostage. Their toxic chemistry makes seething, ex-newlyweds Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries look like Fred and Ginger. In New Hampshire last week, after Romney's Iowa caucus squeaker, an overly giddy McCain mocked his endorsee for his "landslide victory." Awkward.

Then in South Carolina on Friday, McCain mistakenly referred to Romney as "President Obama" -- as Romney and South Carolina GOP Gov. Nikki Haley rushed to correct the gaffe. Freudian slip? Senior moment? Sabotage? All of the above?

Of course, if you choose to pal around with a double-talking, big government barnacle, you get what you deserve.

McCain is the entrenched incumbent Arizona senator/war hero who lost to a neophyte, radical leftist community organizer from Chicago. The "straight-talk" GOP candidate flip-flopped on everything from illegal immigration to global warming to offshore drilling to closing Gitmo. He pandered to minority grievance-mongers and the liberal media. He proposed massive government interventions bigger than Obama's.

This Beltway fossil who now poses as a tea party hero proudly teamed with Big Government liberals Teddy Kennedy and Russ Feingold. He's the "maverick" who supported the $700 billion TARP bailout, the $25 billion auto bailout, the first $85 billion AIG bailout and a $300 billion mortgage bailout -- yet he now carps about "record deficits and debt."

A career politician for the past 30 years, McCain set the stage for the suicidal anti-capitalist rhetoric now polluting the GOP primary. Four years ago this month, during a GOP primary debate held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, it was McCain up on stage denigrating Romney's private-sector experience. Asked whether he thought Romney's record as CEO made him qualified to lead, McCain snarked: "I know how to lead. I led the largest squadron in the United States Navy. And I did it out of patriotism, not for profit."

Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman have all followed suit, bashing Romney's venture-capitalist past at Bain Capital with Occupy Wall Street-style zeal.

It's one thing to carefully dissect Romney's investments, as the Wall Street Journal did, and weigh his wins against his losses. (The paper found that "in total, Bain produced about $2.5 billion in gains for its investors in the 77 deals, on about $1.1 billion invested. Overall, Bain recorded roughly 50 percent to 80 percent annual gains in this period, which experts said was among the best track records for buyout firms in that era.")

It's quite another to shamelessly disparage those who work in private equities as immoral corporate raiders and avaricious job-killers, as the three aforementioned GOP Occupiers have done. If they keep it up, they'll soon be chaining themselves together with bike locks, performing "mic checks" and "down twinkles" at the next GOP debate.

Gingrich has pushed McCain's profit-bashing line the furthest. Backed by a super-PAC (the very campaign finance vehicle he was whining about last week) flush with $5 million from casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, the vendetta-driven former House speaker accused Romney and a "handful of rich people" of "looting" companies. Channeling left-wing propagandist Michael Moore, Gingrich railed that Bain "manipulate(d) the lives of thousands of other people." Gingrich -- who raked in millions consulting for the taxpayer-subsidized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac racket -- also served on the advisory board of private equities firm and leveraged buyout experts Forstmann Little.

But, hey, it's only "looting" if it doesn't line your own pockets.

Romney's chronic flip-flopping political career is teeming with reasons for grass-roots conservatives to oppose his nomination -- from his support for racial preferences and government funding of abortion, liberal judges, global warming enviro-nitwittery, TARP, auto bailouts, the Obama stimulus, gun control and, of course, the Massachusetts individual health insurance mandates that presaged Obamacare. But instead of focusing on his long political record of expedience, incompetent non-Romneys have borrowed from McCain's 2008 playbook and thrown wealth creators of all kinds who take risks in the private marketplace under the bus.

With frenemies like these, who needs Democrats?

Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com. COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM

Romney and McCain: The GOP Frenemies' Club - Michelle Malkin - Townhall Conservative

Champions of Freedom

John Stossel
Jan 11, 2012

It's election season, and so once again people look for heroes. Is Ron Paul one? Maybe. He's fought a long, lonely battle to limit the power of government. As government grows, I yearn for champions of freedom who fight back. Rep. Paul has done that.

But it's a mistake to look for heroes in politics. It's too ugly a business. My heroes are people like Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayek and Ayn Rand.

Damn -- they're all gone.

Here are some other champions of liberty you might not know about: Alfred Kahn was a bureaucrat who, under President Carter, managed to kill off the Civil Aeronautics Board and Interstate Commerce Commission. By bringing freer markets to transportation, he saved Americans billions of dollars.

Norman Borlaug saved billions of lives. He invented a high-yield wheat that ended starvation in much of the world. He also criticized the environmentalists who fight the bioengineered food that could end hunger altogether.

How about Larry Flynt, founder of Hustler magazine? He brought tastelessness to new depths -- but by spending his own money to defend free speech in court. He is a champion of freedom. So is musician Willie Nelson. He brought the battle against drug prohibition to the very roof of the White House (where he reportedly smoked weed).

How about the former president of the Czech Republic, the late Vaclav Havel? He demonstrated that speaking truth to totalitarians, while being willing to suffer the consequences, can be more potent than tanks.

John Blundell's book "Ladies of Liberty" tells the story of female heroes I knew little about -- women like Mercy Otis Warren, who helped shape the American Revolution, and the Grimke sisters, who fought slavery.
Damn, they're gone too.

I interviewed some champions of liberty, like John Allison, who ran BB&T, the 12th-biggest bank in America.

Most people don't think of businessmen as champions of liberty, but I do.

People resent bankers, and frankly, we should resent those who use their cozy relationship with government to freeload. But folks don't understand banks; they think bankers simply grab money for themselves. Allison is one of the few CEOs willing to face the cameras and explain banking to people.

"Banking is essential," Allison told me. "Banks allocate capital to people that deserve it. We see really big problems when the banks do a bad job and give capital to the wrong people."

When the bailouts were proposed, Allison spoke against them.

"I was the only CEO of a large bank that was opposed to TARP."

But when TARP passed, a federal regulator forced Allison to take your tax money.

"He said, 'You know, John, you guys have way more capital than you need ... (but) ...

if you don't take TARP, you're in really serious trouble, because we make all the rules on how you run your bank.' So we ended up taking TARP. ... And it was a rip-off for healthy banks, because we didn't need the money. ... And we paid a huge interest rate."

Allison also defended individual freedom and private property by refusing to lend money to developers who acquired land through government confiscation called eminent domain.

"When the (Supreme Court's) Kelo decision was passed and basically there was carte blanche for the government to take somebody's property and give it to some other private individual, we said we wouldn't make loans to developers that did that.

Interestingly enough, we lost some public entity accounts ... but we had thousands of people move their checking accounts to BB&T. ... We're proud that a business would actually act on principle ... ."

Allison became outspoken about freedom after reading Ayn Rand's "Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal."

Steve Forbes is another businessman eager to explain that when people are free to practice capitalism, it's good for the world.

"The purpose of business is not to pile up money," he told me, "but to create happiness -- giving people a chance to discover their talents. ... It's the best poverty-fighter in the world.

We certainly need more champions of freedom like these.

Champions of Freedom - John Stossel - Townhall Conservative

Romney WILL lose against Barack Obama: Republicans don’t be fooled

Written By: Staffwriter - Jan• 10•12

The media is already touting Romney’s first GOP candidate to win both Iowa caucus & New Hampshire primary. But that does not make Romney a winner against Barack Obama in November. What we are seeing in the 2012 GOP race is what we saw in 2008 with the Democrats. The party establishment has decided who the voter is to accept as the parties nominee, but unlike 2008, the GOP will not win against Barack Obama if the nominee is Mitt Romney.

Let us explain how we come to our opinion in this matter. The GOP is a splintered party and has failed to come out in force in recent years behind a single candidate. Even if those who identify themselves as being Republican came out in November 2012 in full force behind an RNC installed Mitt Romney it would not be enough. Why you ask? Simple, Romney is another John McCain. Romney has had more positions than what is listed in 365 Sex Positions: A New Way Every Day… And John McCain, who recently performed the Arizona back-step with Greta Van Susteren over his 2008 campaign ad “A tale of two Mitt’s’ has demonstrated some of those many different positions already.



Romney is another John McCain in that neither he nor the RNC has the guts it will require to take the fight directly to Barack Obama. Romney has already pulled a clear John McCain in his speech in Iowa January 3, 2012 when he said “President Obama is a good man.” John McCain made the same mistake in 2008 and Mitt Romney has already begun his “I am entitled to be the GOP Nominee” attitude.

Republicans might want to remember what took place in California after Proposition 8 passed. You better remember the radical Gay rights protesters who targeted the Mormon Church and California Mormon business owners and citizens who donated money to the prop 8 campaign. Mitt Romney will not win against Barack Obama no matter which “Mitt” the Romney camp tries to put on the nightly news cast or campaign ads. Even though those of us here at LarrySinclair.org supported Ca’s Prop 8, we also know that a Mitt Romney candidacy will face a very organized and powerful radical gay rights backlash which will bring out more gay support for Obama than the GOP seems to understand. The radical gay rights group are just one of many voting blocks that will come out in massive numbers to support Obama over a Mitt Romney.

Republican voters better decide to take control of their vote back from the RNC and go vote in the primaries and caucuses in your state. Do not go and vote based on what the GOP/RNC establishment tells you; or what FOX News personalities like Britt Hume tells you; vote what you believe and for who you believe represents where America needs to go and who you believe will have the guts to take it to Barack Obama. Do not let the GOP elders tell you who you have to vote for and do not fall victim to this “unless you want another four years of Obama you better nominate Romney and put an end to the GOP primary race.”

Today we still believe Ann Coulter was sober and on to something when she said this in Feb 2011 “If we don’ t run Chris Christie, Romney will be the nominee and we’ll lose,” and we also believe Ann was either drunk or was experiencing a contact high from all the fumes she was breathing when she said this on December 13, 2011, “I think it’s going to be Romney, I think Romney is the strongest candidate and I think Republicans want to beat Obama and Romney is the best one to do that.”

We are NOT in any way, shape or form endorsing anyone in the GOP Presidential nomination process. We are however pointing out that the Party “elders” and or “establishment” has demonstrated that they are more concerned with selecting a nominee they can or will control as opposed to allowing the process to work by letting the Republican voter decide who they want to represent them. We are pointing out that the GOP establishment has taken up attacking and bad mouthing other GOP primary candidates who have far more qualifications than Romney not because they can’t beat Obama (we believe a number of candidates can beat Obama) but because the GOP establishment can’t get over having to do the job they were elected to do years ago.

Mark our words, here and now, if Mitt Romney is installed as the GOP nominee we WILL have four more years of Barack Obama.

Mitt Romney’s comment tonight in New Hampshire “the American free enterprise has come under attack by some desperate republicans…” shows Romney hasn’t a clue on how to beat Barack Obama. Mr. Romney, your campaign adds which are covering the air ways promoting your years at Bain Capital and touting your record of creating jobs is a valid issue to call you on, and being called on it by your GOP opponents is far better than waiting until you are installed as the GOP nominee and the Obama camp tear you to shreds over it.

Romney WILL lose against Barack Obama: Republicans don’t be fooled « Larry Sinclair

Media Blackout on Ron Paul


Ron Paul came in second in New Hampshire. You would not know this from Google News’ top stories.



This comes as no surprise. The Establishment media are terrified of Paul. He is the first candidate for the Republican nomination in U.S. history who is truly in favor of minimal government. The last one who came close was Senator Bob Taft in 1952. But Paul is far more anti-government than Taft.

The blackout is not perfect. You can find articles if you use Google to search for them. I found these. But, as of 4 a.m., I had to go looking. (I get up at 2:45. My work day begins at 2:50. My wife appreciates that I don’t need an alarm clock.)

It is not that the media think that Paul can win. Romney has too much support. What scares them is Paul’s message. It is resonating with too many voters, especially those under 30. These voters are learning that they are not alone. The people who own the mainstream media recognize this threat. When people find out that millions of voters share their anti-Establishment views, this gives them confidence.

Worse, Paul is building a huge mailing list. This mailing list can be as powerful as Richard Viguerie’s was. Viguerie got his list from the list of Goldwater’s donors in 1964. He built the modern conservative political movement with those 12,000 names and addresses. Paul will have a million email names and addresses — maybe more. And he can mail without paying postage.

This is a political turning point — the biggest in 48 years. Maybe more.
Tagged with
Establishment, mailing lists, Robert A. Taft


Media Blackout on Ron Paul

Doug Wead Interview On Fox Day After Ron Paul 2nd Place Finish

Tuesday January 10, 2012

Andrew Napolitano

Andrew Napolitano believes that Ron Paul is the only GOP candidate who, if elected, won't go to war or tell Americans how to live.

Andrew Napolitano - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - 01/10/12 - Video Clip | Comedy Central