For over a year, and as recently as Super Bowl Sunday, Barack Obama has been excoriating the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision (which held that Americans don’t lose their right to free speech when they associate as a corporation) and the ensuing phenomenon of “Super PAC’s”, vehicles designed to engage in corporate speech. Now his reelection campaign is promoting a pro-Obama Super PAC, headed by two former White House staffers and blessed by the campaign’s blog.
The Constitution protects everybody, even those who want to cut back Constitutional liberties, so I have no objection to the President’s willingness to utilize instruments that he has described as “a threat to democracy”. I won’t even chide him for hypocrisy, that most over-denounced of political vices. It isn’t unreasonable for his campaign manager to plead that Democrats shouldn’t be expected to “unilaterally disarm”. (Unilateral disarmament is only for the U.S. military.)
What this development ought to do is put paid to the assumption that the Obama campaign can raise a billion dollars for the reelection effort. Until just recently, everybody took it for granted that cash would pour in the way it did in 2008. If the President’s men still believed that, they would have kept to what they regard as the moral high ground and at least pretended to have no desire for Super PAC support, which they would scarcely have needed. Instead, they are making a high profile pitch – as high as legally allowed – for donations.
Evidently, the myriads of small donors who gave in 2008, many of whom have since become un- or underemployed, aren’t expected to be as generous this year. Or perhaps there is a fear that Federal Election Commission this time will insist that Internet transactions be screened to eliminate foreign and other illegal contributions (as was not done last time, when Obama received money from, among others, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip). In any event, it’s time to look to corporate cronies, the real base of today’s Democratic Party.
Sources: Alana Goodman, “Obama Campaign Embraces Super PACs”Associated Press, “Obama Reverses Course on Super PACs, Seeks Support”
Jennifer Rubin, “Obama: Did I Reallly Say I Didn’t Like Super PACs?”
Andrew Stiles, “Serial Hy-PAC-risy: Obama’s Reversal Comes as No Surprise”
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