> Like
>Johnson he knew that to defeat the core southern
>constituency he had to dismantle its funding. Total
>war against tobacco was a strike at a core economic
>pillar of the Republican party.
>From the Center for Responsive Politics website
<http://www.crp.org/pubs/tobaccotally.htm>:
Total Dems Repubs 1979-94 PACs $10,683,569 $5,515,110 $5,164,559
1991-92 Total $ 5,730,328 $2,471,568 $3,253,441
1993-94 Total $ 5,143,258 $1,638,021 $3,504,937
1995-96 Total $10,324,088 $1,890,778 $8,431,560
1997-98 (partial) Total $ 5,963,356 $1,306,849 $4,655,507
What I see is that the Dems war on tobacco has transformed even-handed funding in the 1980s into lopsidedly Republican funding in the late 1990s. And the 1995-96 total of $10.3 million was out of a total cost for that Congressional cycle of about $433 million.
Tobacco money goes heavily to tobacco-state Congresspersons, which certainly helps sustain cretins like Helms, but on the other hand, these are not people likely to challenge tobacco for electoral reasons either. So aren't you overstating things a teensy bit, Greg?
Doug