That’s what they would like you to think.

But the fact is, back then, and even now, the money people are necessary to raise money, which is used to raise more money, which is used to raise money. The only “message” that they are necessary for getting out is to give them more money.

I remember the Bob Dole (McCain I) campaign. Or, rather, I remember seeing on the news that he was nominated. I can’t remember seeing any commercials or bumper stickers or any other advertising for him. I do vividly remember reading a news story that he had burned through tens of millions of dollars on his campaign though. And after I asked myself where the hell he could have spent it since I saw zero evidence of spending even one dime, I read that almost all of the money was spent on fundraising efforts. Spending money to get money.

IT’S A SCAM PEOPLE. Ninety-five percent of these groups exist for the sole reason of soliciting funds in order to pay themselves. The occasional shooting off of the mouth that they do is designed for one purpose and one purpose only — not to actually change things — but to use it to solicit money. They may spend a nickel or dime every now and then on the cause, but most of the money is spent on “overhead,” i.e. paying themselves.

They are nothing more than leeches. Many of them are dinosaur leeches who have been around since the beginning of time, and some are newer, but their main interest is in having people think that they are a big shot and giving them money. It ain’t about actually solving the problem.

Two, I’d create multi-level book awards with several categories. One requirement, if you’ve already sold 3000 or more books, you can’t enter. I don’t want Glenn Beck to win this award. What I want is for him to either judge it, or have one of them named after him.

Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, and Rush can all have an award named after them. Beck for pugnacity and questions, Coulter for comedic wit, and Limbaugh for overall excellence. And if I can give 20 K to the winner, and 10 to the second, and 3 to the third, and about seven 500 buck awards to the last seven, I might be able to get our heavyweight trio to discuss them in their forums, hand out the awards possibly, and who knows, even kick in some dough to help support a worthy cause.

That’s nonfiction punditry.

Also, have awards for a Capturing the Culture fiction section. We need stories to give life to the theories. 1984 by George Orwell and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand did an awful lot of good, and they were’n't all that good books, but they gave the nightmare form in the minds of men.

This is more long-term, but actually more important than awarding punditry books. I’m going to suggest a wide array of genres be awarded. Western, Science Fiction (and yes, about a month ago, I heard a notable person say that Christianity and Sf were opposed which goes to show you that moderate fame and stupidity are not irreconciliable states.), Fantasy, Mystery, Romance.

I’d have a two tier system. If you’re a significantly published author, you can run in your category, and receive an award and a bit of cash for you and your publishing house. Say a thousand each for first place, and it goes down to third place at 250 each. The thousand the publisher gets has to be spent on promotion.

Authors have a lot of problem getting publishers to promote their books. Offer the incentive of a ‘Winner of the Tom Clancy Thriller Award’ blurb for their front cover, and a few bucks to promote it, and …who knows.

Unpublished or weakly published authors get a good bit more cash, something along the lines of the pundits.

All of this gets heavily promoted on conservative blogs by advertising buys. You pretty much can’t turn around for several weeks without stumbling into an add.

Its a question…should one offer special awards for fiction that deals with certain topics, or should one just simply say ‘write Conservative’, and leave it up to the judgement of the judges if that is done. It would be neat to have a SF novel which dealt with global warming as the fraud it is.

Put up a website with all the contestants (anything that is not totally out of place–I’m sure someone would send in a plagiarized version of Mein Kampf.). I’m not sure if doing a public voting would be possible as if this at all works it would attract lefty trolls.

This should in no way cost anywhere near a million bucks, but I’ve been long-winded enough already.

Such a funding model is like Silicon Valley venture capitalism. Lots of bets need to be made in the hopes that the few that succeed make a big impact.

Someone give me $1 million to spread around and let’s see what kind of damage I could do.

Sean, I think that funders on the Right want a solid ROI–non-stop positive coverage. They don’t view the online right like, say sponsoring an artist, but really, it would be the same thing.

The sponsor might have input here or there, but lets the artist do his work. In this case, the work is to influence policy and ultimately, America, to be a better place. That usually means electing Republicans. But it’s not a linear road. And often, there are critical renderings (just like artists lampooning the King).

So we need everyone working together, maybe not in a coordinated way, but at least recognizing that our aims are similar.

As more politicians see the point of online activists, they’ll influence the money people who will see the value. Good will will flow out of this more appreciative environment. And instead of beating each other up, Republicans will get elected. Hopefully.

Funders on the Right should be supporting webloggers, podcasters, and twitters so they can do their online activism full-time. I’m confident $1 million spent on funding online activists is money better-well-spent than the $1 million cable tv ad buys you see various groups announce every week.

So it isn’t about online activists not needing sources of money, it’s about better spending money to build an effective and long-lasting infrastructure.

There were at least two high profile individuals at the event who suggested (without naming names) that some of the top money people in the party were part of the problem. I think we saw that in microcosm this weekend.