Military Shift Campaign Donations From Ron Paul To Obama In March

One of the more tiresome of the Right Wing talking points is the claim, without any evidence, of course, that the Military doesn't like President Obama and is much more supportive of Republican candidates, despite the fact that President Obama outpaced honored war veteran and former POW John McCain in 2008 military contributions, and it seems like he's already on his way to an even better showing against Mitt Romney. It's true that there are a few extremists even in our military who buy into the Obama Hate (people like Lt.Col. Terrence Larkin, who was conned into being the fall guy for yet another frivolous birther lawsuit, or Sgt. Gary Stein, who publicly called the Commander in Chief "the enemy"), and of course, there's no shortage around this site of people, even some who claim to be veterans, who believe that a soldier in the field has the right to pick and choose which orders he's going to follow and if he thinks the order is "illegal" (i.e., issued by an "ineligible" Commander in Chief) he can simply ignore it. Fortunately these are rare exceptions to the bravery and patriotism the other 99% of our brave soldiers show each and every day.

Article excerpt follows:

Military Shift Campaign Donations From Ron Paul To Obama In March
By Ben Armbruster
Apr 25, 2012

The Army Times reported in February that anti-war GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-TX) was at that time, “by far,” getting the most in campaign contributions from members of the United States military. According to a review of Federal Election Commission data, Paul received nearly $250,000 in donations from servicemembers, President Obama, $130,000 and GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney just $23,000.

But now that Paul’s campaign is all but over and presumably, Romney will be the Republican nominee, the military’s donation trend is beginning to shift: away from Paul and toward Obama, the Open Secrets blog reports:

[I]n March, it was Obama that scooped up the most support from the armed forces — about twice as much as Paul, in fact. Romney remains an also-ran when it comes to backing from the military.

Overall, Paul retains the lead. Analysis of OpenSecrets.org data shows that so far in this election cycle, members of the military who donated more than $200 have given Paul’s campaign about $333,134, versus $184,505 to Obama and just $45,738 to Romney.

But in March, Obama and Paul switched places. Members of the military sent $36,448 to Obama and just $17,733 to Paul. Even though Romney solidified his position as the presumptive Republican nominee, military donations to his campaign remained anemic — only $8,630.

Open Secrets charts the donations for March:



The 2012 trend in military donations to presidential candidates mirrors 2008. Early on in the race, both Paul and Obama led Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and other pro-war candidates in campaign contributions from U.S. servicemembers and by the time the Texas congressman exited the race, Obama maintained his lead in military donations over McCain.