Mitt Romney’s flawed plan to
‘fix’ campaign financing
By Editorial Board,
Published: January 17
MITT ROMNEY HAS a
prescription for the super PAC problem: Allow political candidates to collect
unlimited donations, instead of having the funds funneled to supposedly
independent groups.
It absolutely crushed in Monday’s debate--rightfully
so. Good on ya, Mitt.
“Let campaigns then take
responsibility for their own words,” Mr. Romney said at Monday’s debate.
To thunderous applause.
He raises an intriguing
question: Given the Supreme Court’s flawed interpretation of the First
Amendment — that campaign spending equals speech;
I get that the miscreants that inhabit the bowels of
the Post obsess over Citizens United with nasally wheezing and self-immolating
sexual aggression, but protecting campaign donations and other expressions of
political support are precisely the
function for which the First Amendment was designed.
that independent expenditures
on behalf of candidates, even by corporations, therefore cannot be limited —
Gasp! Corporations! (Also partnerships, unions, estates…pretty
much any entity that can freely spend money can have protected speech.)
Just for the record, the Post is, itself, a
corporation that decries the rights of corporations to give money to pseudocorporate
PACs that will subsequently spend it on the type of services provided by the corporation
that writes this guy’s paycheck…is metamasochism a word?
would the campaign finance
system be better off with a regime of no limits plus full and timely disclosure
of donations?
Abso-fucking-lutely.
In other words, a world where
the $5 million check can go directly to the candidate? As Mr. Romney put it,
“Wouldn’t it nice to have people give what they would like to to
Sad. Even Grammar Check catches a typo like that.
campaigns, and campaigns
could run their own ads and take responsibility for them?”
Conversely, in a country where voters don’t like
politicians that take $5 million checks, a candidate could also elect to refuse
donations above a certain amount, or to refuse donations from particularly
shady sources. (Recall the media of the 2010 midterms breathlessly claiming—without
evidence—that GOP PACs and SuperPACs were receiving money from overseas) Giving
more breadth of freedom to campaigners can only benefit the dialogue.
No. Mr. Romney’s cure not
only threatens to be worse than the disease, it wouldn’t necessarily cure the
disease.
No wonder the Post’s Op-Ed page sucks. This is the
type of uninspired drivel that the entire editorial board can get behind? This
is the type of thesis you get in 10th grade history. (Not from me; I
kick ass at this writing thing. My 10th grade thesis was that
Spanish American War and the violent transition from McKinley to (Teddy) Roosevelt
irreparably undermined the Monroe
The $5 million check to the
super PAC supporting the candidate is bad enough —
Why?
it creates the reality or
appearance of a candidate beholden to a particular donor.
Yet it also shields the identity of the donor, making
the appearance of impropriety meaninglessly vague.
Unlimited donations to
candidates would be worse.
[citation needed]
Candidates would be
implicated in soliciting these mega-checks, further undermining public
confidence in the system.
Why? It’s not like the rule change proposed by Romney
would increase or decrease the amount of money in the political system (though
I have a cure for that, too). The only difference would be more information
available to the public and more ammunition with which to hold candidates
responsible.
Plus we might be able to avoid the specter of $35,000
dinners in which tuxedo-clad candidates are dragged through receiving lines
like fucking show ponies so wealthy patrons have a customized picture to hang
on the mantle for posterity. Political galas are like Space
Mountain for adults that are too
foolish to realize that if they just kept that money to themselves, they could
buy their own Space
Mountain
The pressure would be on to
allow unlimited contributions by corporations and labor unions directly to
candidates;
Yes. That’s more or less what Romney proposed verbatim.
currently, they are
permitted, in the aftermath of the Citizens United v. Federal Election
Commission ruling, to give to super PACs.
I hope you’re happy, Washington
The Republican National
Committee is already arguing in federal court that the ban on corporate
contributions to individual candidates should be declared unconstitutional.
Word.
Moreover, the attractiveness
of the super PAC would be diminished but not eliminated, for the very reason
that Mr. Romney notes: The PACs offer a useful, look-ma-no-hands
I’m fairly certain that whoever wrote this has never successfully
operated a bicycle. Regardless, he certainly has no idea that this particular
idiom is used exclusively in reference to attention-seeking braggadocio, not as
a way to profess innocence. Keep in
mind, whoever wrote this is a professional
writer.
vehicle to do candidates’
dirty work.
Yet candidates ability to fundraise directly would a)
diminish the appeal of PACs and thereby decrease the funds and b) attach a
stigma to ads not associated with particular candidates.
Why assume these groups would disappear if
contribution limits for candidates were eliminated?
They don’t have to disappear to be discredited and
marginalized.
Mr. Romney’s suggestion is superficially
appealing because fixing the current mess seems so difficult.
He pretty much nailed it in one sentence.
A constitutional amendment
isn’t likely;
Something for which we can be thankful.
neither is a total change of
heart by the Supreme Court.
Scalia’d, bitches!
The FEC is dysfunctional,
It’s a government agency. Dysfunction is practically
in the mission statement.
and Congress is gridlocked on
this issue.
This is a cute way of saying that these proposals don’t
have electoral support.
Despite all that, trying to
fix what’s broken makes more sense than breaking the system further.
It’s somewhat interesting that the Post, a
corporation, unquestionably has the right to issue as many political judgments
as they see fit. They pay to publish the paper. They spend valuable print area
that could otherwise feature revenue-generating advertisements. What makes them
different from General Electric or Halliburton?
Tighter rules
The answer to a liberal is always more regulation.
on coordination could be
written to prevent wink-and-nod interactions between candidates and super PACs,
You’re fucking kidding me, right? This obliviousness
can only stem from an utter detachment from reality. When you’re cracking down
on winks and nods, rational people realize that they’re wandering into
territory ordinarily reserved for the bat-shit insane.
such as, for example, Mr.
Romney’s appearance at an event sponsored by the super PAC supporting him. The
flawed disclosure schedule could be improved.
This is the very definition of “nibbling around the
edges.”
The emergence of the
candidate-specific super PAC, dedicated to the interests of a particular
politician, puts a different gloss on the Supreme Court’s wrongheaded notion
For those of you keeping score at home, that’s a
corporation bitching three times that
corporations political spending has been deemed protected speech. Weren’t newspapers
supposed to be champions for free speech?
that independent expenditures
do not pose a corruption risk.
Of course there is a corruption risk. There is always
a corruption risk. What this boils down to is your belief that the American
people are too stupid to see through a barrage of deceitful ads. The irony, of
course, is that it is the Post, not the American people, who has been so
corrupted by politics that it has jettisoned its own core ethic of
impartiality.
Even this court
Scalia’d!
might be persuaded to uphold
legislation treating these entities, staffed by the candidates’ longtime
advisers, as arms of the campaign.
Wait wait wait…stop and break it down.
Mitt Romney’s plan is to destroy the wall between candidates
and their PACs by eliminating regulation on campaign finance. The Post
disagrees so vehemently that the editorial board posits a radical new counterproposal:
destroying the wall between candidates and their PACs by adding new layers of
regulation. Both have the exact same desired outcome and radically different
ways of achieving it. Few articles so clearly articulate the difference between
conservatives and liberals.
I like Romney’s plan (it gives me politi-wood), but it
doesn’t address why election spending has ballooned so dramatically recently. In
part, this trend is exacerbated because Obama is terrifyingly inept. The major
reason (and one which long predates the current administration) is that the
government continues to grow in size, influence, and power. Corporations and
individuals alike donate so that they don’t wind up crushed between the cogs of
the machine. Money flows from virtually every sector of the economy to
candidates, PACs, SuperPACs, lobbyists, and consultants. Most donors are simply
hoping that currying favor with those in power buys the right to exist hassle-free
(thought some are waiting for an under-the-table payday). The solution is
profoundly simple: tighten the scope of the federal government, hobble its
regulators, slash the tax code and eliminate all deductions, dismantle the
bureaucracy. Defang the leviathan.
The amount of money in politics is disheartening
because all non-ideological spending is done with the same value proposition:
that benefits derived from their cronyism will outstrip the cost of their
initial investment. This year, x billion dollars will flood into the political
system to get the corruptible into office. But politicians can’t simply repay those debts
out of the federal coffers (although in many ways it would be more economical
if they could). Politicians have to set up and pass pet projects or earmarks in
which that debt is repaid after filtering through inept middle-men with a
profit margin. All the while, waste and fraud accumulate and the system
snowballs upon itself. When we reduce the size of the federal government, we devalue
the investments that fuel the vicious cycle; campaign finance can then take
care of itself.
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