In an earlier article urging readers to bombard the US Senate with telephone calls opposing amnesty for illegal aliens, I made these remarks:

If you have a Republican senator, you can do what I did to get his attention. Tell him that if any Republicans support amnesty, you will never again make a political donation to any generic Republican fundraising committees. Tell him that you will, in future, give all that money to advocacy groups of your choice and to specific candidates that you endorse. For me, that would be NumbersUSA, the National Rifle Association, and Jim Gilmore. But I am sure, dear readers, that you can come up with your own good list!

Apparently I spoke prophetically. An article in the Washington Times suggests that small donor contributions (that’s Mr. and Mrs. Joe Public, and not big business) are down 40%!

RNC fires phone solicitors
May 31, 2007

The Republican National Committee, hit by a grass-roots donors’ rebellion over President Bush’s immigration policy, has fired all 65 of its telephone solicitors….

Faced with an estimated 40 percent fall-off in small-donor contributions … the committee’s chief of staff … summoned the solicitations staff last week and told them they were out of work, effective immediately, the fired staffers told The Times.

The national committee yesterday confirmed the firings that took place more than a week ago, but denied that the move was motivated by declining donor response to phone solicitations….

“Last year, my solicitations totaled $164,000, and this year the way they were running for the first four months, they would total $100,000 by the end of 2007,” said one fired phone bank solicitor who asked not to be identified.

There has been a sharp decline in contributions from RNC phone solicitations, another fired staffer said, reporting that many former donors flatly refuse to give more money to the national party if Mr. Bush and the Senate Republicans insist on supporting what these angry contributors call “amnesty” for illegal aliens.

“Everyone donor in 50 states we reached has been angry, especially in the last month and a half, and for 99 percent of them immigration is the No. 1 issue,” said the former employee….

Sometimes your elected officials ignore your faxes and phone messages. Sometimes you just have to get their attention where it hurts — in their pockets!!