So I’ve been seriously neglecting the mailbag. I’ve probably received a thirty or forty more, including a large photo of Sarah Palin (nice) and a barf bag from the United Farm Workers (what?).

I have not, however, received actual cash, until today.

Dear Jerold,

I’ve taken the extraordinary step of enclosing a $1 bill with this letter because I needed to get your immediate attention.

You see, by the time this letter reaches your mailbox less than 23 days will remain until the end of the 3rd Quarter when I must file my Presidential campaign’s first full report to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

…

In order to post the strongest numbers possible, I’m launching an all-out fundraising blitz to raise $1.9 million before midnight on September 30th.

Right. She wants me to send her money, so she sent me a dollar to prime the pump. It’s a well-used dollar bill, too. I’ve often wondered, when I start receiving a ton of junk mail from some business after buying one item from them, how much they actually end up making off of me when I don’t buy anything else from them ever again. How much does each individual mailing cost? Is it really so much more than a dollar that putting a dollar in the mailing is a cost effective attention-getting tactic? It turns the twenty-five dollars I sent her last time into twenty-four dollars at most.

That question, however, is somewhat beside the point in this case: I’m not looking for a candidate in 2012 who is going to toss out money to their supporters in the hopes of getting more money back from them.

I realize it was just meant as a marketing tool; it’s been used at least as far back as Reader’s Digest, apparently, and I vaguely remember one of the record and tape clubs from the seventies using it. But that’s different than using it for fundraising. I’ve seen it before for charitable fundraisers, and haven’t liked it then either. It must work, because people keep doing it.

But it’s not exactly the right message to send for someone who wants to court the fiscally conservative tea party movement.