Avarice Rewarded

Sixteen--count 'em!--sixteen candidates for the GOP presidential nomination, or there will be by Tuesday.

Why so many?  The way I explain it is--well, why listen to me?  Gabriel Sherman says what I mean succinctly, and besides, he's more important and New York Magazine publishes him.  Basically:

"What this year's primary shows is that — at least when it comes to presidential elections — the GOP is at risk of becoming less of a political party and more like a talent agency for the conservative media industry. Jumping into the race provides a (pseudo)candidate with a national platform to profit from becoming a political celebrity. "If you don’t run, you’re an idiot," a top GOP consultant told me.

And the money is nothing to sniff at:

Since January 2014, Ben Carson has earned as much as $27 million from delivering 141 speeches and publishing three books including You Have a Brain: A Teen’s Guide to T.H.I.N.K B.I.G. Former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina made nearly $1 million in speeches last year and published a memoir. Mike Huckabee’s Fox News contract was worth $350,000 a year before he left to join the race, according to sources. This year he also released a book God, Guns, Grits and Gravy. Ted Cruz made a reported $1.5 million for his book A Time for Truth.

Just becoming a candidate can double your lecture fee, and these days that can be big money.  That is, like a lot of things, it's either very big money or no money at all.

So why aren't a dozen Dems cavorting for their piece of the action?  While it's true that the Clintons command big lecture fee bucks, there are fewer lucrative sources, among other factors that Sherman neatly summarizes:

The disparity between the size of the two primary fields is driven by political and structural forces. The rise of billionaire donors and Super PACs enable more fringe GOP candidates to fund their campaigns. Conservatives’ palpable sense of cultural victimhood encourage them to embrace (and reward) their former candidates even if they lose badly. “The people on the right are heroes to their supporters and that’s how their books sell,” Shrum says. And, conservatives who promote free-market gospel on the lecture circuit, can get easily booked by deep-pocketed corporations who benefit from their message. "A bank is never going to hire Bernie Sanders to speak, but it might hire Rick Perry," says one GOP adviser.

Seldom do I agree with an analysis so completely as when it confirms precisely my own observations.