As the Campaign for His Re-Election Gets under Way, Boy George Is Raising So Much Money That the Democrats Could Be Certain Losers before They Even Have a Candidate

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Never mind sexing up intelligence on both sides of the Atlantic, never mind an increasing number of American deaths in Iraq and the ever-elusive Saddam and Osama Bin Laden, never mind rising unemployment: Boy George now has his mind firmly set on filling his political coffers with a record amount of loot. In the last two weeks of of June, he set off on a coast-to-coast blitz of fundraising that, by the end of this month, will have helped put $34.4m into the Bush-Cheney 2004 account. Before the Republican convention in New York in September next year, he will have raised at least $170m, if not more than $200m. That means he will have no less than $426,640 to spend on political campaigning every day, seven days a week, from now until election time. Not even those great old fundraisers Ronald Reagan, in 1984, and Bill Clinton, in 1996, came close to raising that amount (even allowing for inflation).

What I find astonishing is that Bush is being given a completely free rein to do this and to deliver the most partisan of political speeches, untouched by Democrat politicians or the media. His two-week blitz started off with a $2,000-a-plate dinner of hamburgers, hot dogs and nachos at a hotel in Washington--you get to be in the …