http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/12/us/politics/a-vote-for-unlimited-campaign-financing.html?ref=politics&_r=0
This link tells a sad truth about the election that just concluded.
The biggest – and most welcome – victim of the outcome were the big, deep-pocketed campaign donors. But the result did not deal them a fatal blow.
President Obama’s re-election came as a surprise to the super PAC crowd, led by Karl “Bush’s Brain” Rove, who went into an apoplectic fit the moment the TV networks called “game over” when Ohio’s electoral votes landed in the president’s lap. Moreover, the super PACs that had given truckloads of cash to Senate and House candidates saw their efforts go for naught. The super PACs, namely the GOP-leaning conservative crowd, watched Democrats tighten their grip on the Senate and gain a handful of seats in the Republican-led House.
And of course, the president’s decisive Electoral College win showed that voters’ loyalty cannot necessarily be purchased with negative ads financed by anonymous benefactors.
The Citizens United ruling in 2010 unleashed this electoral monster. The Supreme Court declared that big corporations had just as much right as normal folks – people like you and me – to express their political views. The amount of their money does allow them to buy more TV air time than your Average Joe or Jane. Thus, they can speak more loudly.
It’s far from a done deal that the thumping these big spenders took at the polls last week will silence them. Indeed, now we hear that the conservative action groups are gearing for the next big fight, the 2014 midterm election, to knock off some of those traitorous moderates who just can’t stop saying nice things about the monsters on the other side of the aisle, which includes President Obama.
Still, by my reckoning, the 2012 election produced – at many levels – a most satisfying outcome.