July 15, 2011

A Tea Party Debt Ceiling Ad

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Amy Kremer, the chairwoman of the Tea Party Express and co-founder of the American Grassroots Coalition, wants to take the fight over raising the debt ceiling directly to the people. Her coalition has been secretly cooking up a new TV ad designed to simplify the debate into tea party terms any school kid could understand. In an email Thursday promoting the “big reveal,” Kremer says that the ad is the first the fledgling group has done. Of course, the ad hasn’t actually made it on to TV. Kremer’s group needs a lot more money to move the ad from YouTube to your tube, and she’s asking for donations to make that happen.

The ad plays on the tea party movement’s favorite theme, which is that, by failing to rein in the national debt and radically cut spending, we are pushing the burden onto future generations. It’s a pretty slick production for a group with no money, but so far, it doesn’t seem to have hit the viral sweet spot. (Kremer got a lot more attention—and criticism—after she declared on Fox News that the tea party would back whichever candidate the GOP nominated, including Mitt Romney.) The video had only been viewed 364 times by Friday shortly before noon. Check it out here:

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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