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Right to Rise Fined by FEC
Remember Jeb Bush? The darling of so many Republicans; at least the donor class? They just got caught taking money from our benevolent trading partner, China.
It’s not easy raising over a hundred million dollars, so you have to take what you can from whoever. I’m just wondering how all these people actually think their hundreds of thousands of dollars could possibly influence a man of such impeccable integrity as Jeb Bush. They are really stupid, throwing their money away like that.
Right to Rise was a PAC set up to raise money to elect Jeb, the third consecutive Republican President from the same immediate family. The chairman was Mike Murphy, the guy who appears as a “Republican consultant” on Meet the Press.
Someone suggested the name came from a scrapped ad slogan for Viagra. This is false. It’s more likely that it was a reference to the unfortunate coincidence that Jeb was the third Bush to aspire toward the Presidency and he too had a perfect right to seek the office.
Update: I’m adding the memo and complaint that was posted in the comment section below.
Published in General
“Please clap.”
Who is that serial killer on the right?
Wouldn’t you love to see Murphy’s PAC meeting notes with Jeb?
Hey, how about “Right to Rule!”
Hey, how about “Right to Raise Money!”
Hey, “I found Dad’s rolodex!”
Hey, “Third times’/Bush a charm!”
Hey, “We’ll do for China what we did for the Middle East!”
Hey, “Doing the work Americans won’t do – like donate to my campaign!”
Pitiful.
Jeb! Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . .
Ever wonder why no politician would go head to head with China before Trump? The words bought and paid for mean anything?
Here is the memo:
https://campaignlegal.org/sites/default/files/2019-03/FEC%20Conciliation%20Agreement.pdf
From the Politico piece:
So, the Bushes sought money from the Chinese to help get their latest family representative back into the White House.
The Mother Jones article on Neil Bush‘s efforts may be the most detailed.
You misspelled “Jeb!”.
Talk about insult to injury! So much money, so few primary delegates, and now federal legal troubles! Sheesh, I almost feel sorry for Jeb! He could have had a decent legacy as governor of Florida rather than being the punchline to a joke.
Mike Murphy? — not so much. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Lock him up! Lock him up!
I guess the expected outcome was to have a candidate owned by China but hacked by Russians (Bush) pitted against a candidate owned by Russia but hacked by the Chinese (Hillary). Instead of getting upset by actual corruption we got manufactured outrage about a false Russian connection foisted upon us by an establishment that would have been happy with either Jeb or Hillary.
Good grief, ignore the fact pattern and intent and just get the vapors like a bunch of typical Lefties on Twitter. Read the para 9 and 10 0f the conciliation agreement, the illegal contribution was not in bad faith. They believed it was legal, relying on a legal opinion that the FEC disagreed with, and essentially pleaded nolo contendre. Every political campaign, including Obama’s and Trump’s, does something that runs afoul of the FEC.
Now, should Jeb Bush have run? No- it was a pure ego trip, and he had no prayer of winning. His presence in the race had the effect of nominating Trump, because he (and Luke Thompson/Murphy) used tens of millions running negative ads against Rubio, who probably had the best chance to derail Trump.
But no sane sentient person really believes that Jeb Bush would be selling out US interests to the Chinese.
I probably believed that at one point, but Rubio doesn’t stand up under closer scrutiny. He has some foolish notions about immigration and working with Democrats (Chuck Schumer? Really??).
There’s a difference between selling out and, say, not pushing for a better trade deal, for example.
And there are ‘sane sentient’ people who believe Trump colluded with Russia and Putin.
Did you know that as long as you keep actively seeking office and have registered as a candidate in a coming election — it is nigh impossible to be indicted. I wonder if Jeb knows that.
Is that kind of like last October when Trump reached across the aisle to “Chuck and Nancy” to propose two deals? One of which was remarkably similar to what Rubio had proposed on immigration? Those kinds of foolish notions?
If you look at my comment, it is defining the situation in late 2015/early 2016, not what people think now. Yes, the FAIR types and anti-immigration-NEVER-NO-AMNESTY” crowd would never forgive Rubio for being involved with the “gang of 8”, but he was #2 on every preference list in early 2016, and Murphy et al thus decided that he must be destroyed in order to protect Jeb’s hopeless quest, so they spent $22 million out of R2R on such destruction.
Virtually everything that is posited by anti-immigration activists and ever-Trumpers is utterly silly and unrealistic. Such as the “NO AMNESTY” stuff (even Krikorian says that that is a pointless pipe dream). Peter Berkowitz actually had one of the more sensible ideas on that front (BTW, Jeb Bush even has one sensible idea on that front, even though he is generally pro-Columba-pro-Mexico). Every day that asses without some sort of fix on immigration is a constructive amnesty in reality. De facto really trumps phony imagined de jure. Just ask EVerify.
No there are not. There may have been a (very) few in early 2017, but by the end of 2017 even the few revealed facts were pretty obvious. I think that Trump probably would have “colluded”, and that a bunch of his gang-that-couldn’t-shoot-straight hangers-on would have colluded in a heartbeat- but that is embarrassing, not illegal.
Franco, are you telling us that you believe that there was collusion and conspiracy?