{"id":7374,"date":"2016-06-18T19:10:24","date_gmt":"2016-06-18T23:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/?p=7374"},"modified":"2017-11-07T20:55:22","modified_gmt":"2017-11-08T01:55:22","slug":"campaign-contributions-and-the-gun-control-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/?p=7374","title":{"rendered":"Campaign Contributions and the Gun Control Issue"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Here is a good exercise for those of you who think campaign contributions are the most important barrier to progressive legislation.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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How many of you would not vote for a candidate who agreed with you about everything else if they were wrong about gun control?<\/p>\n

How many of you would not vote for a candidate who agreed with you about everything else if they were wrong about abortion?<\/p>\n

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I know there are a lot fewer of you in the second category than you think at first because Bob Casey is our Senator.<\/p>\n

We can’t get gun control through Congress because there are a lot of voters who would not vote for a candidate, especially in a Republican primary but also in a general election, if they support gun control.<\/p>\n

What the NRA does is not buy members of Congress but mislead those intense supporters of “gun rights” about the implications of small, reasonable steps towards sensible gun legislation.<\/p>\n

Their campaign contributions aren’t buying the vote of members of Congress. They are helping members of Congress who are trying to appeal to that block of votes win reelection. If they buy anything it is not a vote but willingness to echo the NRA line or at least not challenge it.<\/p>\n

There is no way a $20K or $30K campaign contribution is going to be make a difference in a million-dollar campaign if the voters in the district are determined to elect a representative or senator who supports gun control.<\/p>\n

Our problem is that we who support gun control don’t make it a litmus test for voting while those who oppose it do. (And I’m not arguing that we should.)<\/p>\n

And if you doubt that, just look at the career of Bernie Sanders and his abysmal record on gun control. I’m sure a majority of people who vote for him in Vermont support gun control. His concern, however, is with the minority for whom opposition to gun control is a litmus test.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is a good exercise for those of you who think campaign contributions are the most important barrier to progressive legislation. How many of you would not vote for a candidate who agreed with you about everything else if they were wrong about gun control? How many of you would not vote for a candidate who agreed with you about everything else if they were wrong about abortion? I know there are a lot fewer of you in the second category than you think at first because Bob Casey is our Senator. We can’t get gun control through Congress because there are a lot of voters who would not vote for a candidate, especially in a Republican primary but also in a general election, if they support gun control. What the NRA does is not buy members of Congress but mislead those intense supporters of “gun rights” about the implications\u2026 Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[170,15,54],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p35YuU-1UW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7374"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7374"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7985,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7374\/revisions\/7985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}