Biggest Conservative Campaign Donor a Liberal

Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire who spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get Republicans elected, is a liberal. He said so himself in an interview published in The Wall Street Journal.

“Look, I’m basically a social liberal, I know nobody will believe that,” Mr. Adelson said, as Dr. Adelson nodded.

“Number one, I’m supporting stem-cell research,” he said, pointing to a chart of the new Adelson medical research foundation that is funding some stem-cell based science.

“I’m pro choice,” he said. Republicans are pro-life, but he and his wife are not pro-life in politics, he said.

“You can take your own religious beliefs …and live your life with your own beliefs. But to make it a portion of the government’s policies?” He shook his head.

“Abortion shouldn’t be brought up as a political issue,” he said.

 He's also for the DREAM Act and socialized health care:

Finally, he said casually: “And by the way I’m in favor of a socialized-like health care.”

Asked he was sure he was in the right party, he and his wife laughed.

“Look, nobody agrees with 100 % of their planks” in the GOP platform, he and Dr. Adelson both said. [They endorse the Israeli system of socialized medicine.]

Then what the hell is he doing in the Republican Party?According to Politico he has six core issues:

1) Paranoia. He thinks Obama will retaliate against him for spending hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat him. He thinks the investigations into money laundering in his Vegas casino and violation of bribery laws at his Macau casino are evidence of this, and tried to buy a change to the federal corrupt practices act in this last election.

2) Union busting. He hates them. He runs the only non-union casino in Vegas. He appears to compensate employees well, but like any Big Man he doesn't like his authority to be challenged and wants his employees to be beholden to him and no one else.

3) Latkes. One of his major gripes is that Bush ran out of potato pancakes at the last Hanukah party he attended at the White House.

4) Czars. Adelson and the right has this fantasy that there's a shadow government accountable to no one because Obama has appointed "czars" to oversee particular aspects of the government. The Congress and Republican presidents have been appointing such czars for decades, especially "drug czars." Nixon and Reagan were famous for doing this. In management speak it's called "delegation of authority," and is no different that a company hiring another manager to run a new project. Of course, these czars answer to the president and the Congress and the courts, so they're hardly above the law.

5) Control. Adelson wants to control the message the right is putting out. By dangling money in front of these guys, he can control what they say. By threatening to cut them off he dictates what they do.

6) Israel. He wants to dictate American policy on Israel, and buying a Republican -- any Republican -- into the White House would give him what he wants.

There you have it. Adelson is a Republican not because he believes in any of the planks in the party's platform, or has an enduring belief in any of the party's ideology and philosophy, but because he feels persecuted by Democrats and Republicans will give him more stuff.

In other words, Adelson is just another one of those people who voted for Romney because he promised them "stuff."

Why aren't these Tea Party guys drumming Adelson out of the Republican Party?