Quote of the Day: Haggling Over Price

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


From Rick Perry, after Michele Bachmann suggested that a campaign contribution might have affected his decision to mandate HPV vaccines for girls:

If you’re saying that I can be bought for $5,000, I’m offended.

Duly noted, sir. So how much does it take?

Jokes aside, what’s interesting here isn’t Bachmann’s allegation per se. It’s vanishingly unlikely that Merck’s five grand played any real role in Perry’s decision. What’s interesting is the weird, two-faced nature of the more general crony capitalism charge. On the one hand, you have one version (the HPV mandate was a payoff to Merck) that’s ridiculous and unfair, but might actually hurt Perry anyway because the tea party crowd is riled up about the HPV vaccine and therefore open to the idea that there was something fishy about it.

On the other hand, you have the quite plausible and heavily documented fact that Perry has doled out a ton of favors to people who have been campaign contributors over the years. But so far, at least, this version of the crony capitalism charge hasn’t hurt him because…..I dunno. I guess tea partiers don’t really care about their politicians cozying up with rich industrialists job creators.

But! It’s possible that the first version, unfair as it is, could make conservative voters more receptive to the second, more serious version. After all, no one has really tried to seriously tar Perry with the crony capitalism brush yet. It’s a little tricky, I think, since every politician takes lots of campaign contributions and does favors in return. So any mud flung at Perry could easily end up boomeranging. But if Perry keeps riding high in the polls, the rest of the field is eventually going to get nervous enough to give this a try. Bachmann opened the door last night, and I’d be surprised if others didn’t join her in walking through it pretty soon.

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate