College Republicans' budget raises questions about their real purpose

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Let me apologize in advance if this doesn't belong in GD:Presidential. I'm posting it here because it came out of my looking for more background on the Ashley Todd incident, and that's the context in which I'd like it to be considered.

In trying to find out what else the College Republicans might have been up to recently that could shed light on the Todd story, I happened on a very interesting blog entry at http://futuremajority.com/node/3040.

The entry refers to a recent op-ed by the vice-chair of the College Democrats charging that the College Republicans are essentially nothing more than a slush fund for the Republican Party. The author of the post doesn't fully accept that description, but does note that over 70% of the College Republicans' budget goes into fundraising and a substantial chunk of the rest to consultants. Only a small fraction is actually devoted to things like young voter outreach and recruiting the next generation of Republicans.

I recall that when the College Republicans got into trouble in 2004 for scamming little old ladies into signing over their life savings, we discussed their status here at DU and found that a few years earlier they'd turned themselves into a 527. In other words, this is not Karl Rove's College Republicans -- or even Jack Abramoff's. It's a very different kettle of fish.

So the blogger is right to that extent -- but I think he's wrong in dismissing today's College Republicans as nothing more than "an incredibly inefficient direct mail and telemarketing operation" and "a paper tiger with more bark than bite." The GOP isn't quite that dumb -- and the key to what they may really be up to lies in precisely those "incredibly inefficient" direct mail operations.

What I learned as a result of all that digging we did at DU in 2004 was that the real function of the legion of right-wing direct mail operations is often not so much raising money as it is to disseminate propaganda. (It's no coincidence that Karl Rove was in the direct mail fundraising business before he joined the Bush administration.)

All those "wedge" issues that predictably erupt during political campaigns -- gay marriage, illegal immigrants, even social security -- are kept alive between elections by direct mail firms sending out scare letters telling people that there is a threat! to them! and they have to act now! by sending money!

But the money raised in this way typically isn't actually applied to the issues mentioned in the letters. Instead, it goes right back into more direct mail solicitations. So in the long run, the only payoff from these operations is getting scary propaganda into the hands of the nation's little old ladies.

It seems likely that this is the real business the College Republicans have been in for the last half dozen years or so. They're a propaganda outfit, pure and simple.

It would be interesting to know the exact content of some of those fundraising appeal. Is it possible that they've made a regular practice of concocting incidents like this Ashley Todd business to use in their scare letters -- and that this time things got out of hand because they tried to go public with it instead?

I do know that they've made a practice of sponsoring provocative incidents on campuses -- like an "illegal immigrant hunt" game or a prize for the best student essay on "why I am proud of my white heritage" -- whose primary purpose seems to be to provide an opportunity to play the victim card.

The racist slant of all these incidents is also interesting, since explicitly racist groups have been among the most active direct mail fundraisers in recent years -- and there are list brokers that arrange for fundraisers to sell or exchange their mailing lists, so they have a motivation for trying to appeal to one another's constituencies.

I don't know what the real answer might be about the current nature and purpose of the College Republicans. But it's clear that they're not merely a set of campus organizations -- and I think their actual operations could use some investigation.