The Patriot Post® · Frothing at the Mouth Over McCutcheon Ruling

“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.” –William F. Buckley Jr.

For the second time in four years, liberals all over America are once again in the throes of apoplectic rage at the Supreme Court over a decision expanding free speech rights.

On January 21, 2010, in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that the First Amendment protections of free speech prohibit the government from restricting political donations by corporations (and labor unions, but you never hear the left complaining about that). This ruling became a rallying cry for the left, who decry the corrupting influence of money on our political process. Eight days after the decision, Barack Obama stood before the assembled members of the House and Senate, as well as the justices of the Supreme Court, and railed against the immorality and danger of the decision.

Quoth Emperor Barack, “With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that, I believe, will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections…I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests or, worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps correct some of these problems.”

The leftist media erupted into a furor when Justice Samuel Alito, sitting motionless while being excoriated by the Lecturer-in-Chief, had the audacity to mouth the words “Not true”. Ignoring the complete inappropriateness of having the President of the United States look down upon the Supreme Court as if he were scolding mischievous children, liberals declared Alito’s comment to be rude and “inappropriate”. But of course Justice Alito was right; the ruling in Citizens United was completely and intentionally mischaracterized by Obama, and the prohibition against campaign donations by foreign entities and governments was still in place.

Besides, considering the fact that Al Gore raised money from  foreign donors at a fundraiser held at a Buddhist temple, and the fact that the Democrat Party under Bill Clinton took $100,000 from the Communist Chinese military in 1996, shortly after which the Clinton administration reversed long-standing U.S. policy and began allowing the export of advanced satellite technology to the Communist Chinese government (a completely unrelated coincidence, I’m sure, that just happened to help the Communist Chinese leap years ahead in their efforts to “develop and use nuclear missiles”), you’d think that the Democrats would be thrilled at the thought of foreign money floodgates opening into their election coffers.

Yet here we are again, with liberals in a rage at the expansion of free speech. On April 2nd, ruling in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the federal government’s aggregate limitations on the amount of money that one person or entity may contribute in a federal election cycle, while retaining the $2600 limitation on contributions to any one candidate.

The left once again prophesies that this is the end of our American experiment; corporations will now proceed unabated to flood untold millions into the political process, and the government will become a subsidiary of nefarious corporate interests.

As lamented Nancy Pelosi (D-Botoxia), “I’m concerned about what it means for our democracy. Our founders, they sacrificed their lives, their liberty, their sacred honor for a democracy: a government of the many, not a government of the money.” Of course, as every good little Congress critter should know, America is not now, nor has it ever been, a democracy; a form of government so loathed by the Founding Fathers that they considered it second only to anarchy as the least desirable. But as usual, Democrats never let anything as mundane as facts get in the way of a good story.

Truth be told, Democrats are not so much concerned about keeping money out of politics as they are concerned about keeping conservative money out of politics. The hundreds of millions funneled into their campaign accounts, we are supposed to believe, do not influence them one iota in favor of those giving the money. Nope, it’s only money from the Koch brothers that is the currency of Satan himself, a form of Mephistophelean moolah that greases the palms of Lucifer’s lackeys in the Republican Party.

So we can rest at ease knowing nothing untoward need be inferred from the fact that, according to an analysis by OpenSecrets.org of campaign donations by organizations over the last 25 years, six of the Top Ten, and 11 of the top 16 biggest donors were labor unions, which gave between 56-91% of their hundreds of millions of dollars of campaign donations to the Democrats (with no union giving more than 2% to Republicans, other than the Carpenters and Joiners Union, which gave 9%). That does NOT include ActBlue, a campaign bundling superPAC for Democrats, the top overall contributor, which gave more than $100 million, not a dime of which went to Republicans.

In fact, for all of their weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth over the corrupting influence of corporate money, they have it in their power, regardless of the Supreme Court decision, to reject that corrupting influence by simply refusing to accept it. This is due to the fact that, of the top corporate donors, you have to go all the way down to #17 on the list to find a corporation (United Parcel Service) which gives at least 60% of its donations to Republicans (64% to Republicans, 35% to Democrats).

That means that Democrats can turn away the millions upon millions in corporate money flowing to them from the likes of AT&T, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, UPS, Citigroup, Microsoft, Lockheed, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, General Electric, and many, many more.

In fact, I think every Democrat who has railed against the Citizens United or McCutheon rulings should take a public stand and renounce ALL future corporate donations. This includes Barack Obama (who received $1.7M from Microsoft, $1.6M from Google, $1.3M from Goldman Sachs, and $1.2M from JP Morgan Chase), Nancy Pelosi ($1.3M from labor unions), and Harry Reid (nearly a million dollars from casinos, nearly a million dollars more from trial lawyers, and hundreds of thousands more from corporations like Comcast, JP Morgan Chase, AT&T, and The Blackstone Group).

For all of their lamentations and histrionics about the corrupting influence of money in politics, these Democrats are rolling wheelbarrows of corporate and labor union money right into their bank vaults, even as they sputter and spew nonsense about how the American political system is being bought off and hijacked by the sinister Koch brothers (who, by the way, you have to climb all the way down to #59 on the list to find…23 spots after media titan Time Warner, which gave 72% of their $25 million in campaign donations to…you guessed it…Democrats).

To paraphrase the immortal words of the Bard of Avon…methinks they doth protest too much!