Fundraising with lapel pins..

There are fundraising ideas and then there are fundraising ideas with "rewards". New Jersey Mark notes a problem or two or three in his letter below to Tom Edsall at the Washington Post:

Dear Mr. Edsall,
I read your fine article about the College Republicans. Do you know one of their fundraising letters included a lapel pin that they asked recipients to pray over and then send back with a check?

The "come on" was they'd then give the blessed lapel pin to the president to wear when he made his nomination acceptance speech at the convention last September. Now it would be one thing if this was a single letter sent to Richard Scaife or a deep pocket donor like him but this was sent to thousands of people. I saw no mention that it was a contest that could be won by the highest bidder or most fervent beseecher of our Lord.

So imagine if you will President Bush covered head to toe with tiny American flag lapel pins! If you'll pardon the expression this shit is so good ya can't make it up! The fact that they raised $9 million dollars off blown brain crap like this, of which over $8 million went to the direct mail outfit they outsourced the mailings to, speaks volumes about the intelligence of these kids AND their leaders. Andthey want to run the country some day.

When that kind of idiotic fundraising actually works with their base, when they're so business savvy they get screwed by the icky contractors who get their hands dirty putting together their mailings for them you can see where that's headed. I'm sure if given the chance someday Davidson or Gourley will do just as good a job of balancing the budget as George W. Bush or their patron saint Ronald Reagan.

But all snark aside I write to you today with more urgent news about the CRNC. A fella who calls himself Jesus' General JC Christian has organized an attempt to get young Repubs to enlist in the US Army he calls OperationYellow Elephants. I'd particularly like to point you to a post he calls, "Seriously". You can read more about it at his blog at: http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/

The CRNC has a well produced website at: http://www.crnc.org/ I've looked it over carefully. I checked out the list of speakers at their convention and their extensive list of jobs and internships available at rightwing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the AEI. At their convention there isn't one member from the military scheduled to speak let alone any recruiters. On their website there isn't one link to GoArmy.com or any other recruiting site. Not one. We're at war. The US Army fell short of it's enlistment goals in May by 25 percent. They had hoped to recruit 6,700 new members but missed the mark by 1,661 recruits. Even after lowering their quota from over 8000 they still missed their goals. This makes the fourth month in a row that the active duty Army hasn't been able to round up enough able bodied, drug free, non felon patriots to fill the ranks.

Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly the head of the Army Reserve sent Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff a memo last December that said "his command is rapidly degenerating into a 'broken' force." The recruiting crisis is so bad Army Recruiting Command had to hold a stand-downday last month to remind their recruiters that kidnapping, threats and lying to potential enlistees are not only not approved US Army recruiting techniques but are in fact illegal. These are known facts reported in your newspaper.

I took the liberty myself of calling several recruiters near Arlington VA. I spoke yesterday with a Sgt. Nauta and today with a Sgt. Kraft at 703-682-6399. They both seemed interested when I informed of the CRNC convention going on now at the Crystal Gateway Marriott. As well they should seeing as they're about as popular in the malls these days as Typhoid Mary. I sincerely hope they went over there and signed a few kids up. And I sincerely hope you will write an article about the efforts to get them to do so. Thanks for your time.
TrueBlue Patriotically Yours,
Mark Garrity
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Wonder if the College Republicans even allowed the recruiters anywhere near their young Republican members?
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