The 2012 Selection

It was always annoying when [the] two parties and the slavish media that follows their champions around for 18 months pretended that this was a colossal clash of opposites. But now, with the economy in the shape that it’s in thanks in large part to the people financing these elections, that pretense is more than annoying, it’s offensive.

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[As] Dylan Ratigan continually points out [...] the candidate who raises the most money wins an astonishing 94% of the time in America.

That damning statistic just confirms what everyone who spends any time on the campaign trail knows, which is that the presidential race is not at all about ideas, but entirely about raising money.

The auctioned election process is designed to reduce the field to two candidates who will each receive hundreds of millions of dollars apiece from the same pool of donors. [...] Just take a look at the lists of top donors for Obama and McCain from the last election in 2008.

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Obama’s list included all the major banks and bailout recipients, plus a smattering of high-dollar defense lawyers from firms like WilmerHale and Skadden Arps who make their money representing those same banks. McCain’s list included exactly the same banks and a similar list of law firms, the minor difference being that it was Gibson Dunn instead of WilmerHale, etc.

The numbers show remarkable consistency, as Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup all gave roughly twice or just over twice as much to Obama as they did to McCain, almost perfectly matching the overall donations profile for both candidates: overall, Obama raised just over twice as much ($730 million) as McCain did ($333 million). [Ed… With this notable exception: Goldman Sachs gave $1,013,091 to Obama and $240,295 to McCain.]

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Wall Street correctly called Obama as a 2-1 [...] favorite to beat McCain.

  Matt Taibbi

Gee, where did they come up with those odds?

[The Iowa Caucus] marks the beginning of a long, rigidly-controlled, carefully choreographed process that is really designed to do two things: weed out dangerous minority opinions, and award power to the candidate who least offends the public while he goes about his primary job of energetically representing establishment interests.

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[E]veryone knows that in the end, once the primaries are finished, we’re going to be left with one 1%-approved stooge taking on another.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's hopes of a decisive victory in the Iowa caucuses were shattered early on Wednesday, when Christian fundamentalist Rick Santorum ran him a close second to provide the tightest finish in the party's history.

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Only eight votes out of the 120,000 cast separated the two, with Romney picking up 30,015 votes and Santorum 30,007.

  UK Guardian

Either all the fundamentalists in Iowa showed up, and barely anyone else, or perhaps we should have a look at who’s donating to Rick Santorum. Suddenly. Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachman – they each enjoyed the media red carpet for a while as the “man” for Mitt Romney to beat. Suddenly it’s the nuttiest and least likely to win against Obama of them all – Rick Santorum. The media are like a peewee soccer match following an uncontrolled ball. Only there are forces controlling the ball, of course, and just as calculable, if quite disparate, in the GOP “race” as they are in peewee soccer matches.

Romney and Santorum both ended the night on 24.5% of the vote, Paul 21.5%, Newt Gingrich 13%, Rick Perry 10%, Michelle Bachmann 5% and Jon Huntsman 1%.

Well, that’s pretty much a three-way, then, isn’t it? Of course, we all know that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will never give money to the campaign of the man who wants to shut down the Fed. And Paul’s campaign apparently thinks Santorum is just another flash in the pan.

Paul's campaign team claimed it was now down to a two-man race between himself and Romney because Santorum did not have the resources to mount campaigns in other states.

And, if I had to bet, I’d guess they’re right, because the big money donors wouldn’t seem to have any reason to support Santorum over Romney. They do, however, have reason to squash Ron Paul.