October 1, 2013

The Public Sure Doesn’t Seem to Be on the GOP’s Side


I’m about the 500th person to mention this, but it’s really kind of gobsmacking that the latest “strategy” from the House GOP caucus regarding the budget is to demand a conference committee with the Senate. These are the same guys who have been resolutely refusing to go to conference for months—despite plenty of begging from Patty Murray—because they were afraid that a conference committee might not guarantee that they’d get 100 percent of their demands met.

But now they suddenly think a conference is a great idea. Why? Who knows. I imagine they’ve decided (a) they don’t have a lot of other options left, and (b) now they want a compromise. They must be figuring that if they go to conference with defunding Obamacare as their demand and passing a budget as the Democrats’ demand, then the public will buy the idea that, say, delaying Obamacare for a year is a reasonable halfway compromise. Or something.

But the latest Quinnipiac poll sure doesn’t seem to back that up. The only thing more unpopular than defunding Obamacare outright is to use a shutdown or a debt ceiling crisis as extortion to defund Obamacare. Whether they like the law or not, the vast majority of the public just flatly doesn’t approve of hostage taking to accomplish something that Republicans couldn’t accomplish by winning elections.

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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.

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