Anyone following the presidential election is well aware that Mitt Romney has friends in rich places, and his campaign is out-fundraising and outspending President Obama’s by huge margins. On Friday’s TRMS, Rachel discussed the drastic monetary disparities between the two sides with Obama fundraiser and Miramax co-founder Harvey Weinstein.
So far in super PAC fundraising, Republicans have raised $158 million, and Dems only $47 million. Maddow asked Weinstein why he’s a fundraiser for Obama and what he thinks about the disparity.
The movie producer put it in his own terms:
“When you’re talking about spending money, I’ll give you an example of two movies that I distribute. I spent the exact same amount on both movies. One movie was called “The King’s Speech.” It grossed $140 million, won a few Oscars, including Best Picture, and did sensational based on its budget. The other picture was called “Our Idiot Brother” and we spent the same money and the movie grossed $25 million. Not bad for what we paid for it, a little bit of profit. To me, Romney is “Our Idiot Brother,” Obama is “The King’s Speech.” You can spend all the money in the world, but if you’ve got a bad product it doesn’t matter. Ask anybody on Madison Avenue, don’t ask the Wall Street guys, bring the advertising guys on. If I have a defective product, I can spend $5 billion and I’m not going to sell anything.”
The president has said he’s not worried about Romney’s “unlimited” resources, but Obama campaign manager Jim Messina sent an urgent email to donors on Friday asking them to open their wallets and start closing the gap. Maddow asked Weinstein why Democratic donors who’ve supported Obama in the past seem to be giving less money this election cycle.
“I think people are confident on the Democratic side. I think you see Romney and you hear even conservatives, Rupert Murdoch, criticizing Mitt Romney. And there’s so much dissention, Mike Lupica wrote a column at The Daily News calling him a ‘Mute’ Romney," Weinstein said."He doesn’t say anything, maybe that’s why these guys have to raise all that money and have advertising. We have a president who speaks and speaks to the issues. They have a candidate who says nothing, they also have a campaign strategy which is ‘say nothing.’ At a certain point, the American public will get tired of it. If the Democrats need money, people will raise more. I think everybody is sitting back and saying, ‘why spend it if we don’t have to.’ If we have to, they will.”
The Weinstein Co. co-chair wants people to know he’s no bleeding heart liberal – he’s voted for Republicans and raised funds for them as well.
“When there’s a good man, there’s a good man – with all due respect to governor Romney, he is not capable of running the United States,” he said.