Lloyd Green writes at The Hill:
In 2012, two-thirds of Mitt Romney’s individual contributions came in the form of large donations. As for his backers, their top five employers were large banks: Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, according to Open Secrets. Of Romney’s top five donor states, only Texas voted for him. At the same time, however, West Virginia was the state nearest to Wall Street that Romney won. As a practical matter, however, West Virginia may as well have been in a separate galaxy.
By contrast, small donors comprised an outsized portion of Trump’s campaign haul. In other words, Trump’s donors were his voters, and vice versa, and that nexus is not one that has escaped Bannon’s eyes. At Moore’s primary night party last month, Bannon hammered away at the fact that Moore was not graced by a deep bench of donors, and the reality is that Moore was outspent 10 to one.
Over the next 14 months, Corker stands to repeatedly stymie Trump. As a legislative body that relies upon consensus to function, a coalition of Democrats and renegade Republicans are poised to block Trump at every twist and turn. Yet that does not constitute party building, and for the moment it is Bannon who is keeping his eye on that prize.
