Numbers Don't Lie (Even If Republicans Do)

By Baxter

As kittens, we cats were a lot better at English than math. But even we can see through Rancid Pieface's latest boast about the RNC's big plan for minority outreach.

Pieface is preening that this year, the Republicans will sink $10 million into sending hundreds of party operatives into minority neighborhoods nationwide. Their mission: To win back the voters they've scared and offended. Instead of just "parachuting" in, he says, the RNC will plant these folks on a long-term basis to talk up the GOP and all the good things it's gonna do.

We cats say, big deal. Here's why.

These operatives are going to be paid. That's right, they'll be RNC employees. And Pieface says there will be "hundreds" of them. So, okay, let's say that the party hires 200 people — 200 being the lowest number that could qualify as "hundreds" — and pays them each $50,000 a year. (That's the low end of what we suspect the RNC usually shells out to staffers.) Whoops, there's your $10 million!

And what about travel? Office supplies? Promotional materials? Cellphones? Computers? Coffee and doughnuts? Are they part of the $10 million? If not, who's picking up the tab for those?

In 2012, the Obama campaign had nearly 800 field offices across America, with 2.2 million volunteers who contacted one out of every 2.5 people in the country. But the RNC is going to get it all done with, um, 200 paid lackeys and no budget?

If only the smug, self-satisfied inhabitants of Pundit World would just educate themselves on campaign organizing and run some numbers. They'd realize that the only thing calculated here is Rancid's ploy to distract them from the RNC's cluelessness. We cats HISS.

UPDATE: Well, here's one pundit who smells a rat: "$10 million sounds like a lot, but in political terms it is a pittance...$10 million is what Republican fat cats find in their couch cushions."