Money Bombs, politics and Senator DeMint

Looking to build on the Scott Brown (R-MASS) Conservative mania sweeping across the country, Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) has dedicated a new political action committee to help lesser-known candidates.The Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF) is floating much needed finances to Conservative candidates in hotly contested primaries.


DeMint explains the SCF has made sure the “conservative voice” is heard within the Republican Party as well as around the nation. “What we are trying to do with the Senate Conservatives Fund with people like Marco Rubio, Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, Chuck DeVore in California, and a number of others is to at least give Republicans an option of main stream conservative candidates in the primaries.”


A good example of this “mixing it up politics” is the Florida GOP primary where establishment guy Charlie Crist is facing a tightening race with young up-and-comer Marco Rubio.


“RubioMoneyBomb.com is the money bomb we hope to drop on Marco Rubio. He’s a great young candidate in Florida running for the Senate against more of an establishment Republican. He believes in limited constitutional government and I think he is the new face of the Republican Party,” DeMint told Fox News. Rubio was able to surpass the $200,000 mark with a few hours to spare.


So far DeMint’s hard work has paid off as the South Carolina Conservative Senator reported more than $1.3 million in his SCF war chest. "I think Republicans are looking for a way to distinguish themselves from the old Republican,” DeMint admits. “The establishment Republicans that many think ran our party into a ditch with too much spending and tens of thousands of earmarks."


DeMint’s new PAC has used direct mail solicitations and online tools to build a network of some 27,000 donors in 2009 and has an e-mail list of more than 100,000 contacts, according to a report from CQ Politics.
"We have a situation now where our e-mail list is bigger than a lot of newspaper circulations and we can get instant response like what we're doing with the Rubio money bomb," DeMint says. "So a lot of doors are open. It gives people voices who haven't had voices in a while."


The expansion of the Tea Party movement throughout urban and rural America has reestablished the desire for smaller government, less spending, reducing the debt and living within one’s means. “These are commonsense ideas and for any Republican to try to radicalize those ideas is a signal that we still have Republicans in name who just don't get it," DeMint said.


NRSC spokesman Brian Walsh said if DeMint or any other Senator or Congressman wants to help raise money for Republican candidates the NRSC views that as a good thing. The NRSC has taken in more than $40 million so far this year. "The bottom line is that at the end of the day we share the same goal of leveling the financial playing field with the Democrats next year," Walsh said.


Back in ultra-liberal California, the GOP Senate primary is shaping up to be a real horse race. While Conservative DeVore doesn’t have large name recognition on his side, he has logged thousands of miles, hundreds of stops, possesses a Tea Party grassroots network and an ICaucus endorsement,it is well known these folks are more likely to vote in primaries.


"Whatever the polls say four months before the primary, the strength of the volunteers backing us, the lack of any skeletal remains in my closet are going to allow me to prevail in this primary and to ultimately vanquish Barbara Boxer," DeVore said at the January meeting of the West Valley Republican Women Federated at a diner in San Jose.


“A sleeping giant has been awakened," DeVore said. "Some of you (voters) are scared. Some of you are mad as heck, but times are different and we can win.”


A recent poll from Rasmussen Reports states 75 percent of Americans are somewhat/very angry while 19 percent are not very angry, this underscores the need for Conservative candidates to have a fair shot in the primaries, DeMint says..


This ground swell coupled with DeVore’s history as a Reagan foot solider makes the possibility of DeVore’s California dreaming tsunami to go all the way to D.C. in November a reality.


For more stories; http://www.examiner.com/x-10317-San-Diego-County-Political-Buzz-Examiner