Unintended Consequences

There’s an interesting article in Newsweek by Kurt Eichenwald about the unintended but ultimately disastrous consequences of the GOP embracing the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision.

Looking at the last two presidential election cycles through the post-Citizens United prism of Super PACs, the clear conclusion is that this near unlimited campaign spending by the wealthiest interferes with the natural selection process of weeding out weak campaigns and candidates.  The last two GOP presidential primaries illustrate this too well.  First, there was the unnecessary prolonging of the primary season in 2012, followed by the chaos of the current cycle despite efforts by the Republican Party to accelerate the timetable in order to coalesce around a nominee quicker. Now many party insiders are praying for the chaos of a brokered convention to save themselves from the possibility of Donald Trump winning the party’s presidential nomination.

Yes, Democrats have Super PACs as well, but they do not rely on them anywhere near as much as their Republican counterparts. Most Democrats publicly rail against the decision. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have both said during the Democratic primary that they want to overturn Citizens United, by judicial decision or through the legislative process.

The entire article is well worth reading, especially if you want to try and answer the question of how much is too much money in politics.

The post Unintended Consequences appeared first on David De Sola.