Jan 22, 2010 by Bruce
The end of democracy, or something
I’ve put off commenting on yesterday’s Supreme Court campaign-finance decision in Citizens United v. FEC until now because I first wanted to see the reaction from across the political spectrum. I was not prepared for the level of doomsday screeching from the Left (and from a former GOP presidential candidate) on a free speech subject for which there should be broad consensus in favor.
A New York Times editorial doesn’t mince words: The Court’s Blow to Democracy. The first sentence tells you all you need to know: “With a single, disastrous 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th Century.”
Robber barons? You mean that we might see multi-billionaires like George Soros throwing hundreds of millions of dollars toward the liberal candidates they favor? Oh, wait..
Or could we have unions like the Service Employees International Union (think purple-shirted thugs protecting Dems at townhalls last summer) spending, let’s just say, $27 million to get Democrats elected? Or that the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees might spend approximately $30.7 million on Democrats. Oh, right, that’s what they did in 2008.
As far as I can tell, unions and corporations (and don’t forget the robber barons) are already spending millions on elections. The objection from the Left to the Citizens United case, which found that restrictions on corporate and union spending to finance campaign ads violated the First Amendment, appear to stem from a fear (or assumption) that corporations are all Republican-controlled entities chomping at the bit to fool the electorate with all kinds of “swift-boat” ads against Democrats.
Puh – lease.
If campaign help from the leader of the free world isn’t enough to elect Democrats in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts, then campaign ads bought by Exxon-Mobil aren’t going to sway elections either. As the recent elections have amply proven, voters have shown themselves capable of wading through the campaign rhetoric just fine.
