The Patriot Post® · Warren PACs Up

Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren announced last week shortly before the Nevada caucuses that she had decided to embrace the support of a super PAC to help fund her campaign. Warren had previously pledged, loud and proud, that she would not accept super PAC money, claiming such cash is a sure path for corporate and elite interests to unduly influence the election. She made it a central tenet of her campaign, using her stance to boost her so-called populist bona fides. She even tried to get her fellow candidates to join her no-super-PAC pledge, but with the exception of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, nobody took the bait. That was before Warren’s campaign hit the skids.

She told a town hall in Nevada, “From the first day I got in this campaign, I said to anybody who runs for president, ‘Let’s do this without super PACs…’ Nobody took me up on it. Not a single other candidate would agree with me. So I haven’t changed my position.” To clarify, Warren has not changed her position on the fact that other candidates shouldn’t accept super PAC money. As for herself, well, a candidate’s gotta do what a candidate’s gotta do.

Warren has yet to make a decent showing in any of the primary contests, and her poll numbers are downright disastrous compared to her front-runner status last fall. Right now, she needs to do anything to stay alive. And she’s hoping that an infusion of cash from Persist PAC will do the trick.

Of course, Warren isn’t the only hypocrite in the race when it comes to super PAC money. All the Democrat candidates have decried unlimited spending in elections, and they have all demonized the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that lifted restrictions on political donations by corporations, nonprofits, and other organizations. Leftists proclaimed it the beginning of a new political Dark Ages, in which corporations would now buy elections at will. The fact that Citizens United was an organization producing a documentary critical of 2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton surely also played a factor in leftist criticism of the Supreme Court decision.

Citizens United did not lead to billionaires buying elections — not yet anyway. Rather, big-money bundlers have been largely outshined by money from smaller donors that have become key to Democrats’ campaign financing in the digital age. In fact, the case could be made that Warren should be thankful for Citizens United because it provides her an opportunity to be competitive against the likes of Mike Bloomberg, who has all but admitted that he is prepared to buy the 2020 election outright.

Nevertheless, Warren’s flip on accepting super PAC money may be too late to save her campaign. This latest stunt may even lose her as much support as it gains, as many of her supporters attached themselves to her campaign because of her self-imposed ban on super PAC funding. She has once again exposed herself as an opportunist who will say anything — including repeatedly lying about her personal experiences — to further her ambitions. She even wants us to believe that it is the fault of the other candidates that caused her to flip her position. As always, she’s the “victim,” but how exactly does that make her fit to lead the nation?