Where's the FCKING MONEY, Lebow... Oh Wait, I Meant to Say WHERE'S THE FCKING MONEY, RICK "MEDICARE FRAUD" SCOTT?

Lest you think this blog is dedicated ONLY to the misdeeds and grifting of donald trump, Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice), it's been awhile since I ranted about THIS sonofabitch. So let's go.

A development this week - via Betty Cracker at Balloon Juice quoting from the Washington Post - is that deep into the 2022 midterms the Republican Senators running for election are running out of money to pay for things like ads, workers, and donuts:

Republican Senate hopefuls are getting crushed on airwaves across the country while their national campaign fund is pulling ads and running low on cash — leading some campaign advisers to ask where all the money went and to demand an audit of the committee’s finances, according to Republican strategists involved in the discussions…

“If they were a corporation, the CEO would be fired and investigated,” said a national Republican consultant working on Senate races. “The way this money has been burned, there needs to be an audit or investigation because we’re not gonna take the Senate now and this money has been squandered. It’s a rip-off.”

The NRSC’s chairman, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, has already taken heat from fellow Republicans for running ads featuring him on camera and releasing his own policy agenda that became a Democratic punching bag — leading to jokes that “NRSC” stood for “National Rick Scott Committee” in a bid to fuel his own presumed presidential ambitions...

As Betty noted, "Who could have predicted that putting a crook like Rick Scott in charge of the National Republican Senatorial Committee would make all the money go poof?"

I love that anonymous quote "If they were a corporation, the CEO would be fired and investigated," because that underscores the reality that Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott WAS the CEO of a health care corporation who WAS fired while the company was forced to pay a $1.7 billion fine. The amount of money Rick actually stole for himself - it may have been $300 million - is still in dispute.

While the reality of fund-raising in a post-Citizens United world is wide open for candidates to get their money, the candidates still require some base level of support from their own party to cover a lot of their expenses. Senate campaigning can be an issue due to travel logistics (some states are HUGE and lack affordable transit infrastructure), for example. You gotta be certain you're getting some revenue somewhere, and there's no guarantee the richest Republican backer in your state has enough liquid assets (pocket change) in the moment to hand over (most rich folk are actually wealthy on paper: the money is on the stock market, investments, properties, you know like a Monopoly board. Anyway I digress).

As a result, the party that brung ya - in this matter, the Republicans - has to be well-funded enough at the national level to cover all their priorities, which should be 33 contested Senate elections this cycle (remember, the Senate rotates by thirds for their six-year terms).

And yet, the money's not there.

The other thing mentioned in that WaPo article is how Scott has been spending a lot of the party's money on himself, filming his own campaign spots - even though he's not running this cycle, his so-called buddy Marco Rubio is instead - as though he is the only one who matters. Scott also pushed out - against the advice of other party leaders - a policy agenda for Republicans that was a mix of "Contract On America" calls to patriotism, vague promises of culture war victories, and slashing popular federal social programs like Social Security.

If Scott thinks any of this is going to help him run a Presidential primary in 2024, he's not only a crook he's a goddamned idiot.

There is nothing about Scott that would make him popular or well-liked enough outside of the state of Florida to gain any primary victories down the road. He's not even that popular in Florida. He only won here for pretty much the same reason other Florida Republicans won the last 20 years: the demographics and voter turnout barely favored them over a Democratic state organization that's barely organized.

I said this before about Jeb! Bush (remember him?): 

Jeb! is primarily in politics because of the family name: generations worth of Bushes from Prescott to Bush the Elder to older brother Dubya. Jeb won the governorship of Florida (on his second try) at a time the state was solidly Republican, and even though he tried to hide his last name everyone in state knew where he came from. In hindsight his campaigning showed little innovation or risky stances: It was mostly a thing of fait accompli...

I noted almost the same thing about Marco Rubio:

Okay, I dunno if  you paid attention to the 2010 election, but the thing is Rubio won because A) Crist jumped out of the Republican Party that no longer loved him to run as an Independent, B) Crist and the Democratic challenger Greene kind of split their vote making it easier for Rubio to win, and C) in that Tea Party driven election cycle even a dead dog running for the Republican ticket would have won. Don't go giving Rubio props for a skill he don't have.

These guys - it was also Scott Walker from Wisconsin, whom the Beltway media fell in love with being a Rust Belt Republican (but not much else), and Chris Christie from New Jersey, and so many others - get on the national stage thinking they're charismatic and winning, but they always overlook the reality that they only won at a state level where the dogmatic GOP voting base and questionable Dem turnout gave them the illusion of popularity. When they actually canvass the nation for Presidential hopes, they all (Stop Trying to Make Rubio Happen He's Not Going to Happen) flamed out spectacularly against the juggernaut that was the trump Campaign Grift.

2024 won't be any different. If Rick Scott thinks he can forge a platform to run on, the primary voters don't give a fuck about the issues, all they care about is spiting the Libs. If Rick Scott thinks he can impress the voters, he's got nothing to impress them with. The fact he physically looks like the bastard child of Voldemort and Nosferatu will not help him when he goes campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire.

And if Rick Scott thinks he won't be the target of donald trump's bullying - considering how trump dominated the debate stages by ridiculing and mocking everyone else there until they whimpered and rolled over - just wait to see how trump brings up Scott's Medicare Fraud to humiliate him on that. If Scott thinks he can punch back by pointing out all of trump's criminal misdeeds, he is going to anger up the GOP voting base that's already in trump's corner.

I said this earlier: Nothing can stop trump being on the 2024 ticket. Even if he's already faced criminal trials and convicted to jail time, the Republican voters - all of them MAGA, all of them mad - will happily vote for an orange-jumpsuit and orange-colored Shitgibbon.

If Rick Scott thinks he can impress Republican voters by being a Medicare Fraud, he is still laughably an amateur compared to the fraud donald trump's committed for 50 years. And the GOP voters already chose trump.

The schadenfreude on this will cut deep, children.