October 10, 2011

Why Rick Perry is Slamming Romneycare Today

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So Rick Perry has a new ad up that slams Romneycare in about the same apocalyptic tones you’d normally use to advertise a movie about a zombie invasion of the world. Perry’s ad, of course, is plainly not meant to influence the upcoming primaries, which are still months away. It’s meant to create a mini-feud on the day before a Republican debate, thus prompting the debate moderators to mention it, or maybe play a clip, and then demand that Romney address Perry’s blast.

I guess this is legit. And it’s not as if the subject probably wouldn’t come up anyway. But I just thought it was worth a note. This is one of the ways that primary battles are waged in the brave new era of YouTube and the endless debate. Creating teensy little controversies right before each confrontation is all part of the game nowadays.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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