Campaign Financing

A firestorm has erupted after the latest SCOTUS ruling involving campaign donations.  In the McCutcheon case, the SCOTUS effectively eliminated restrictions on the amounts individuals can donate to campaigns. Following the Citizens United decision, SCOTUS has equated campaign donations with free speech.  Critics complain that this allows elections to be bought.  Most critics are liberal.  That means that liberals fear that conservatives will now be able to leverage elections in their favor.

What's ironic about this rending of garments and gnashing of teeth is that shortly before the Court issued the McCutcheon opinion, opensecrets.org, an outfit that labels itself as the Center for Responsive Politics, issued a report on the top donors for the period from 1989 through 2014.  With a couple of tweaks, it includes anyone who donated big money to either Democratic or Republican candidates during that time period.  The results are startling, to say the least.

For anyone who's interested, here's the link to the report:  https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php

Taking just the top twenty donors -- the list includes 156 names -- whose cumulative donations range from a high of $100,887,828M to $31,654.912M, only two -- TWO!!!! -- are listed as leaning Republican, which means that between 60-69% of the money donated by that group went to Republicans.  Of the remaining eighteen donors, six are distributed between Democrats and Republicans, leaving twelve as being heavy donors to Democratic candidates.  It's worth noting that the two heavy Republican donors landed at numbers 17 and 19 on the list.

Why liberals should be so fearful of McCutcheon and Citizens United defies explanation.  The rest of the list, although it includes more conservative-leaning donors, still includes plenty of liberal-leaning donors. Barring a statistical analysis, an eyeball test seems to show that liberal donors at least match if not outspend conservative donors.  I'd have to review the actual totals of money given to both parties (and the amount that's claimed to be split evenly between them), but I'd bet that there isn't a great discrepancy between the money given to the two parties by their supporters.

What makes this at all topical is that lately -- with a nod to Pat Buchanan -- that nattering nabob of nuttiness, Harry Reid, has been attacking the Koch brothers, conservatives who give to many politically neutral charities as well as funding the conservative group Americans for Prosperity, for trying to buy the next elections.  It's as if, to hear Mr. Reid tell it, the Koch brothers are bribing and suborning and persuading people solely with their money to vote for Republicans.  There are a couple of problems with this argument.

First, Koch Industries only comes in at number 59 on the Open Secrets report.  At a mere $18,283,448, they're dwarfed by several unions in the top fifteen that donate heavily to Democratic candidates.  Why should the Koch brothers and their companies be targeted by Mr. Reid?  The answer is very simple: Deflection.  Given Democrats' vulnerability due to the outlandish failures of the Obama regime, not the least of which was Obamacare that most Democrats supported, they have to not only run away from that but also have something, anything, to hang in effigy.  What better than to find a pair of old rich white men who donate to causes that are hardly regarded as progressive to set up as the target?  What's more, as anyone who's ever looked at statistics for more than five minutes knows, statistics can be made to mean anything.  By painting a less than full picture not only of the Koch brothers but also political donations in general, Mr. Reid hopes to whip up liberal voters and energize them to help Democrats retain power in Washington.

What's laughable about this, were it not so sad, is that the Democrats have their own heavy hitter when it comes to donations.  George Soros, who once said it was his life's mission to oust George W. Bush from the White House, notoriously gives oodles of money to liberal candidates.  Hollywood, as I've mentioned countless times, gives to liberal candidates, liberally.  These are not people making donations of $25 or $50. The fundraisers attended by liberals in support of their candidates are no less awesome in the amounts of money thrown around than those attended by conservatives.

Harry Reid, to put it simply, is a tool.  Unfortunately, the people of Nevada continue to overlook this out of self-interest, stupidity or both.  Dick Durbin's constituents share the same problems.  For them to suggest that the Koch brothers are un-American when their own supporters funnel at least as much money to their campaign coffers is ludicrous.

The American people deserve better than these charlatans.

(c) 2104 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles