October 3, 2011

Rick Perry’s Spectacular Fall From Grace

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Just to recap, in less than two months Rick Perry has:

  1. Suggested that maybe Ben Bernanke should be lynched.
  2. Declined to back off his contention that Social Security is an unconstitutional Ponzi scheme.
  3. Called climate change a “contrived phony mess” that was cooked up by scientists who have “manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling in to their projects.”
  4. Pissed off the conservative base by defending his decision to (in Michele Bachmann’s immortal words) give “government injections” to “innocent little 12-year-old girls.” Said Perry condescendingly: “What I don’t get is what parents don’t understand about an opt out.”
  5. Further pissed off the conservative base by suggesting that if you disagree with his policy on in-state tuition for illegal immigrants, “I don’t think you have a heart.”
  6. Mangled a prepackaged debate attack on Mitt Romney so badly, and then followed up with a statement on Pakistan so inscrutable, that even his supporters started to wonder if he has a three-digit IQ.
  7. Proposed that US troops should be used to fight Mexican drug lords. In Mexico.
  8. Had to defend himself against revelations that his family leases a hunting spot called “Niggerhead.”

I’m putting this up because you can’t truly grasp the full scope of Perry’s train wreck campaign unless you see the whole list in one place. It’s really pretty stupendous. Has any top-tier presidential candidate in history ever imploded quite this quickly?

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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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