The Price Tag for Beto's Hapless Presidential Run Is In: $14 Million (A Lot of AR-15s)
Even for a Democrat, Robert “Beto” O’Rourke knows how to blow money.
The former Texas congressman brought his bid for the White House to a close on Friday, ending a long-shot run at an office he never deserved in the first place.
But he didn’t do it without running through $14 million in campaign spending first, according to Fox News.
And considering O’Rourke’s presidential dreams came less than a year after he lost a hideously expensive Senate race to Republican Ted Cruz in Texas, one thing is clear:
Robert Francis O’Rourke is an expensive guy to have around.
O’Rourke’s challenge to Cruz in the 2018 midterms ended up costing $75 million only to end in defeat, according to Fox. (The Cruz campaign spent $45 million, Fox reported.)
That was the most expensive Senate race in history, Fox News reported in October 2018.
Of course, that $75 million wasn’t completely wasted by O’Rourke’s backers. After all, it helped make him a major name in national politics, and even spurred on the idea that a man who’d served all of three terms as a minority-party member in the House of Representatives, then lost his only statewide election, had somehow acquired the experience and abilities needed to be the president of the United States.
(Not every politician rolls out a presidential bid with a Vanity Fair cover story. How much more American could he get?)
As to the $14 million that got blown on O’Rourke’s vainglorious effort to win the Democratic presidential nomination?
It turns out social media users had a number of thoughts about that money — and many of them weren’t very complimentary to the former candidate, who will probably be best remembered for his outright advocacy of the kind of unconstitutional gun confiscation that leftists and the media dishonestly call “buybacks.”
Think of how many AR-15s he could have bought with that money. I’d have sold him one for 14 million.
— GovBert (@GovBert) November 2, 2019
That could buy a lot of skateboards ?
— Darren (@FakeDarrenOlson) November 2, 2019
They preach about change that needs to happen and 14 million spent on a joke who had no chance to win. All of the money went to the establishment that they sit and complain about. I’m sure 14 million would have made a difference to a real cause.
— doug mags (@doug_mags) November 3, 2019
And that last one nails it.
There are few things Democrats have shown themselves to be better at than spending other Americans’ hard-earned money.
In O’Rourke’s case alone, the man has run through about $90 million in the course of two political campaigns a year apart. Even by Democrats’ profligate spending, it’s a jaw-dropping amount of money.
It could have gone to any number of the kinds of causes Democrats want to spend other people’s money on – maybe free health care for illegal aliens.
Done right, it might even have been used to take any number of what liberals call “assault rifles” out of private hands.
Heck, one Twitter user above offered to let his AR-15 go for a cool $14 million.
And unlike Beto’s precious presidential campaign, there would have been something of value involved.
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