Big Money Chasing The Top Dems

Two articles ran today with different takes on the same theme:

• WSJ reports that corporations are shifting their donations in a big way from the GOP to Dems. Pelosi and her three top House cohorts raised $2.24 million in the first quarter of 2007, more than three times as much as the $697,694 they raised in the same quarter last year.
  
  House and Senate committee chairs are experiencing similar, or even better, surges: Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel of New York: $761,000 in the first quarter of 2007 from $57,000 two years earlier; Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell, $376,000, up from $112,000; Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank of Massachusetts, $217,000, up from $39,000; and House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton, $227,000, up from $57,000.
  
  
• The NY Sun reports that Hillary and Obama are sucking money out of the pockets of former Bush supporters, with each attracting about 150 former Bush supporters, including the CEO of Yahoo! (their stupid exclaimation point, not mine). One such switcher is investment banker John Canning, who gave over $100,000 to Bush in 2000. Says the Sun:
  

  Mr. Canning, whose defection to Mr. Obama was reported by Bloomberg News, said he was a big fan of Mr. Bush in 2000. However, he said he later fell out with the president and other Republicans over a dispute involving a brain-injured Florida woman, Terry Schiavo, as well as subjects like global warming, stem cell research and diplomatic relations with Iran and Syria. "A lot of these issues didn't exist when Bush first ran," the banker said. "How do you support a guy when he shows the door to everything you believe in?"

How are you going to argue with that? Canning was obviously looking for a liberal GOP candidate and got instead a man who is what he said he was on social issues and on dealing with terror-sponsoring states.

It's odd that companies like Allstate and Aflac will give to Barney Frank because he intends to hold hearings that will lead to new regulations on insurers. Or that oil producers will ratchet up giving to John Dingell, who's seen as the point man for global warming regulation in Congress.

They will tell you that all they expect is time in return for their contributions, and that face time is more critical to them when Dems are in power than when the GOP is in power.

But what's to become of this money? Will it sit in bank accounts, humbling accruing interest? No way! It will be spent to further the Dem agenda of higher taxes, more regulation and a more favorable field for trial lawyers.

Is the face time really worth all that? Methinks not. Even those who no longer like Bush should be writing checks to the GOP election committees.