There's no need to rehash the election of last week -- or The Great Leap Forward, as we call it on the First Coast. It was what it was.
But one aspect stood out: Other than the fact that it fits into the "money is the root of all evil" template, I've never understood the liberal fascination with campaign spending.
Liberals relentlessly bombard the electorate with "news" about how much candidates are spending and who is giving them money.
Clearly, the media believe voters are so stupid that they will vote for whoever puts the most ads on TV. The complementary assumption is that politicians are beholden to donors -- although in the liberal media this only seems to apply to conservative politicians.
So, why wouldn't the lib media refuse to run the ads on their TV stations and in their newspapers if it is helping to subvert democracy?
That ain't gonna happen. Election-year ads help TV stations and newspapers earn big, fat profits.
Did you think the media were comprised of charitable organizations?
I suspect the real problem is not too much spending, but not enough. If they could somehow ban private giving and get the government into the business of financing elections, there would be an unlimited supply of money filling those corporate coffers.
As for the theory that he who spends the most wins, the rich-therefore-evil Rick Scott, (who availed himself of his constitutional protections!) spent more than the evolving liberal/moderate/conservative challenger who ran against him. There you go.
Yet, up in Maryland, some Republican guy won the governor's race in a blue state while spending less than half what his opponent spent.
Yes, it's true. While Democrats were shedding crocodile tears about spending, they were raking in the cash. Why weren't the liberal donors giving it to the poor instead?
The total amount spent on the midterms nationwide is supposed to be more than $3 billion, which sounds like a large number when you don't compare it to anything. Americans spend twice as much on video games.
Compared to what the federal government is spending, it is pocket change. Furthermore, federal spending is rising at a greater clip than election spending, according to John Lott Jr.
Most of the news coverage was the horse-race variety: so-and-so is leading in the polls or in raising cash.
If there was any attention paid to issues and the candidates' records, it was in trying to knock down the conservative candidate via "fact checking," or outright attack.
More often, it was berating the rich; or some rich.
Harry Reid, soon-to-be-former majority leader in the Senate, foams at the mouth when he hisses the name "Koch," but seems oblivious to the identity of a well-heeled socialist named "George Soros."
When 65 percent of the people think the nation is heading in the wrong direction, is it so strange that a lot of people chose to help those who want to change direction?
Maybe Occam's razor is sharper than we know.
Lloyd Brown was in the newspaper business nearly 50 years, beginning as a copy boy and retiring as editorial page editor of the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. After retirement he served as a policy analyst for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
