Posted on 12/08/2008 1:08:20 PM PST by Jim Robinson
Freedom's Watch, a conservative political advocacy group bankrolled mainly by casino owner Sheldon Adelson that poured $30 million into this year's political races, is shutting down.
Multiple sources said the board of directors, which includes former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and former Ambassador to Italy Mel Sembler, has decided to close down rather than just scale down post-election.
"There are no ifs or buts," said a Republican operative close to the situation. "The board has made the decision to shut the doors."
The group had always planned a reduction after the election and up until the Thanksgiving holiday it was considering downsizing from its peak size of about 50 staff during the campaign to a few key positions.
The group's dependence on Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, one of the GOP's biggest donors, was in the end its undoing.
Only a year ago, Mr. Adelson was the third-richest man in America, with a net worth of $28 billion. Flush with cash, he was the driving force behind Freedom's Watch, which registered as a political lobbying group in September 2007.
Mr. Adelson's company, Las Vegas Sands Corp., has since then lost 95 percent of its stock value, reaching a low of $2.89 a share in November, down from $122.96 a share one year ago.
Mr. Adelson contributed most of Freedom's Watch's money. The organization's reliance on his largesse was such that at one point this fall, all staff were herded in front of a video conferencing screen to sing "Happy Birthday" to Mr. Adelson.
Freedom's Watch had boasted at the beginning of 2008 that they were poised to spend as much as $200 million on the presidential campaign and other statewide races around the country.
In the end, they spent $30 million...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Just pitiful...
There is no more freedom to watch.
were they even in action this last cycle?
seems they must have been doing something wrong.
They should have taken that 30 million and pumped it into FreeRepublic.com.
...they’re just expressing what I’m feeling. You want Socialism? Go for it....
There’s something wrong when it is a casino that is funding ‘conservatism.’
I think it is clear.
They have no money and do not want to do fundraising.
The names in the article are the “Z” list of conservative exciting.
Where are the A list conservaties? Seems they were just good a conning that rich person out of 30 million with OLD SCHOOL comunications.
seriously, just three million pumped into FreeRepublic.com would have done a great deal more for conservatism than 30 million for country club republican and their think tank.
Freedom isn’t free
It costs folks like you and me
And if we don’t all chip in
We’ll never pay that bill
Freedom isn’t free
No, there’s a hefty fu__in’ fee.
And if you don’t throw in your buck ‘o five
Who will?
Word...
Move-On is "seen" as bottom-up, but is it really? Without Soros' money, would it exist? How big is their staff? How many "field reps" do they have? How many salaried "organizers" are there?
It's not the grassroots that are organized, it's the organization that's organized, well-funded, and media-savvy.
It's simply a superior top-down organization, as opposed to groups like Freedom Watch that apparently don't even bother with grassroots.
:-(
looks like the obamazombies do not want freedom. They want “rich people” to pay their mortgage and give them a fill their gas tank and they will gladly sell their freedom.
generation lazy is in charge of the change.
move on started with 30k and two paid “volunteers”.
We need the same for freerepublic.
An email alert list.
A social networking.
contunued use of the alias posting forum.
To paraphrase the mobster in Johnny Dangerously:
“It’s embarrassing. I don’t tell people I’m a conservative. I tell them that I’m a libertarian.”
There’s only one thing to do now. We all go to Vegas and stay at the Venetian. Let’s stay in the solution people!
There are too many kooks on FR for big money to come here.
If you take 20% of the most extreme members of FR, they will rival anything the daily KOS can produce on the left.
Further, a lot of threads have “comment deleted”.
The more civil and respectable simply will not be associated with FR.
given the creationism threads, I can see what you are saying.
However then a freerepublic.com version II needs to be created without the kooks.
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