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Valuable Republican Donor Database Breached -- By Other Republicans (politico.com)
Politico reports:
Staffers for Senate Republicans' campaign arm seized information on more than 200,000 donors from the House GOP campaign committee over several months this year by breaking into its computer system, three sources with knowledge of the breach told Politico... Multiple NRSC staffers, who previously worked for the NRCC, used old database login information to gain access to House Republicans' donor lists this year. The donor list that was breached is among the NRCC's most valuable assets, containing not only basic contact information like email addresses and phone numbers but personal information that could be used to entice donors to fork over cash -- information on top issues and key states of interest to different people, the names of family members, and summaries of past donation history... Donor lists like these are of such value to party committees that they can use them as collateral to obtain loans worth millions of dollars when they need cash just before major elections...
"The individuals on these lists are guaranteed money," said a Republican fundraiser. "They will give. These are not your regular D.C. PAC list"... The list has helped the NRCC raise over $77 million this year to defend the House in 2018... Though the House and Senate campaign arms share the similar goal of electing Republican candidates and often coordinate strategy in certain states, they operate on distinct tracks and compete for money from small and large donors.
Long-time Slashdot reader SethJohnson says the data breach "is the result of poor deprovisioning policies within the House Republican Campaign Committee -- allowing staff logins to persist after a person has left the organization."
NRCC officials who learned of the breach "are really pissed," one source told the site.
"The individuals on these lists are guaranteed money," said a Republican fundraiser. "They will give. These are not your regular D.C. PAC list"... The list has helped the NRCC raise over $77 million this year to defend the House in 2018... Though the House and Senate campaign arms share the similar goal of electing Republican candidates and often coordinate strategy in certain states, they operate on distinct tracks and compete for money from small and large donors.
Long-time Slashdot reader SethJohnson says the data breach "is the result of poor deprovisioning policies within the House Republican Campaign Committee -- allowing staff logins to persist after a person has left the organization."
NRCC officials who learned of the breach "are really pissed," one source told the site.
"... In fact when it comes to list of clients, which in politics a donor amounts to, ..."
Boy, are you naive. Donors are the Product. Key Politicians are the Clients. Whale lists like these go way back to the Reagan Governorship Era, and Consultants Spencer-Roberts, who first gained notoriety with their smear campaign against Goldwater... on behalf of Rockefeller. That was the end of the 11th Commandment: "Thou shalt speak no ill of a fellow Republican." Republicans now hate each other almost as much as they hate Democrats.
Whale Lists were invented by Spencer-Roberts. They racked up huge leasing time on the then-innovative IBM 360, creating databases on Republican constituencies, and key voting points. Racism plays well in the South, (See the Southern Strategy.), whereas the West leaned more Libertarian on such issues as Drilling and Gun Control. And all the while, they were compiling lists of those who, if primed properly, would gush Money.
They lost on occasion; they made the switch to Ford too late in 1976. But by the 1980 Election, they were firmly in the Reagan camp again, and created that memorable phrase for him... wait, you don't remember it? America was just coming off the massive Inflation of the War Years, and Ford's "Whip Inflation Now!" hadn't worked, either as a Economic Plan or as a Campaign Slogan. It was felt that Reagan shouldn't get too specific on Policy issues, but he needed a good Slogan to kick things off. First was to shift the Inflation mess on Carter. And that is what Carter is remembered for now: Carter=Inflation. The best that could be said about Carter at the time was that he didn't make Inflation much worse. But for the 1980 Republican Primaries, Spencer-Roberts coined a Slogan for Reagan so utterly without meaning that it has gone into History... and so has been pretty much forgotten.
Ronald Reagan, 1980: "...it's time to make America great again." Old tricks are the best tricks.
The issue isn't thievery; the issue is Integrity. That the Republicans have lost any sense of Integrity, even among themselves, is only evidenced by the thievery. Goldwater may have been one mean old SOB, but he did have Principles of a sort.