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Just who is Sheldon Adelson and why does he have so much money to throw around on political campaigns?
As the nation shook off the holidays in January, we learned that someone who is probably a new name to most people, Sheldon Adelson, just dumped a cool $5 million into Newt Gingrich's campaign. That doesn't bring Newt up to the plutocratic levels that have propelled Mitt to the top of the polls. (Restore Our Future, which supports Mitt Romney, raised more than $12 million during the first half of 2011 with many of the larger donations coming from former banking buddies of Romney.) But it buys a lot of air time anyway. CBS News called it, "the largest single donation that could directly aid a candidate in American history." Without it, Newt might have been forced out of the race. (And some people still insist that money doesn't buy elections! Thank you so very much, Citizens United!)
So just who is this Sheldon Adelson?
Actually, the name was familiar to me. I'm a techie and a nerd and when I was a young nerdish techie, the most fun I ever had standing up was at Comdex - the greatest computer convention ever in America. Sheldon owned Comdex. In the 70's and 80's, up to half a million people would trek to Las Vegas in September to hear what Bill Gates had to say and blitz out at the vendor parties. By comparison, attendance at this year's CES show (currently the biggest electronic show - we've branched out from strictly computers) hit a peak of less than a third of that attendance five years ago and has been declining ever since.
It seems to me that Sheldon got rich in a way not that different from winning the lottery ... except that he made a lot more money ... because he certainly didn't do it by running a great show. (The vendors did that.) He was just lucky enough to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. Since he knew he had a monopoly on a really scarce product (There was only one!) he ran the show right into the ground by overcharging for absolutely everything. Vendors eventually quit coming because they couldn't afford it. But Sheldon made out like a bandit. Literally.
But none of this tells you why he wants Newt to be President. To understand that, you have to look at Sheldon's other side. The PowerBase web site, an encyclopedia of people, issues, and groups shaping the public agenda, calls him "a hardline Zionist and a key bankroller of several Israel lobby initiatives". They document that Adelson is, "A member of the Board of Directors of the conservative Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC). Adelson is also a generous contributor to such Israel lobby projects as AIPAC, One Jerusalem, Freedom's Watch, Taglit Birthright and the Jerusalem-based Adelson Institute."
Based on what he chooses to do with his time and money now, Adelson appears to be loyal - not to America - but to Israel. And while he has given his money generously to Republican candidates over the years, he has already invested six times the amount in Newt that he gave to George Bush. This, after his fortunes have tumbled by $24 billion in 2008. (You might think he would reconsider his support of Republicans, just due to the timing, especially since he has rebounded by $20 billion since President Obama has been in office, but that doesn't seem to be the case. All figures from Forbes via Wikipedia.)
Given his willingness to tear apart the Republican Party and even attack the sacred cow of capitialism in his attack film on Romney, there seems to be no reason to doubt that Gingrich would hesitate to sacrifice America too. And who could accomplish that better than the President?
