Supreme Court Blindness: Unlimited Campaign Contributions
Jules Witcover

 

Once again, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has ignored precedent by inserting itself into politics, this time paving the way for an intensified money arms race that will greatly increase the buying of friends and the purging of enemies.

That is the obvious ramification of its 5-4 decision opening the floodgates to unlimited campaign spending by corporate America. It brushes aside the 1947 protections in campaign finance law against the corruptive influence of freewheeling spending for or against targeted candidates.

The Roberts Court thus has replicated the behavior in 2000 of the Rehnquist Court that turned its back on precedent by injecting itself into a state political matter in Florida, handing the presidency to George W. Bush. The country has continued to pay a very high price for that.

The new decision, which further equates the spending of money with the First Amendment exercise of free speech, also obliterates the effort to prevent the 11th-hour flooding of negative advertising outlawed by the bipartisan McCain-Feingold Law of only seven years ago. This from conservatives who profess to worship at the altar of precedent.

Coming only two days after the political shock of the election of a Republican to the Senate seat long held by Sen. Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts, this Court action has much greater potential for the whole conduct of American politics for years to come.

Corporate America already is reeling from its own excesses in the economic collapse from which the Obama administration is struggling to survive. It can be expected that the big thumb of business money will come down hard for Republican candidates and against Democrats in the congressional elections this fall.

Republican incumbents accordingly can be expected to harden their solid opposition to the entire Obama agenda and health-care reform in particular. And Democratic incumbents will be more wary in their support, lest special-interest corporate money finger them for defeat.

While labor unions under the new ruling will also be freed up to pour more money into the retention of favored Democrats, organized labor has been a shrinking political force for years. It figures to be no match for the corporate money flowing into Republican campaigns and against pro-labor Democratic incumbents.

At the same time, the huge grass-roots and net-roots support that was a major factor in the election of Barack Obama last year has not materialized in behalf of his agenda in any comparable manner so far.

Meanwhile the populist protest of the Tea Party movement and voters generally is gathering steam against President Obama. He is striving to divert or even embrace it with such proposals as taxing major banks that received bailouts last year and are paying out huge executive bonus again, but the effort has already fired opposition on Wall Street.

Obama, in criticizing the court decision as "a green light to a new stampede of special-interest money," has called on congressional leaders to "develop a forceful response." But he isn't likely to find much Republican cooperation to curb a development that offers great political benefit to the corporate-friendly GOP.

In sum, President Obama needs this latest Supreme Court verdict like he needs a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. With his drive for health-care reform already detoured by the Republican upset in Massachusetts, the new threats to Democratic incumbents in Congress from unshackled corporate money reinforce the Republican strategy as the Party of No.

At the core, the court decision has broadened the argument that free speech can be exercised not only by what comes from an individual's mouth, but also from the wallet of corporations and unions -- at the likely cost of the enhanced corruptive influence of the almighty buck.

When President Bush replaced the conservative William Rehnquist with John Roberts, there was no ideological shift involved. But his appointment of conservative Samuel Alito when the more moderate Sandra Day O'Connor retired proved to make all the difference.

Alito also had recited then the conservative litany of stare decisis -- adherence to precedent. But that didn't stop him now from overruling the existing ban on more corporate money in politics. So much for the value of Senate confirmation hearings in predicting future conduct on the bench.

 

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Supreme Court Blindness: Unlimited Campaign Contributions | Jules Witcover

 

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