The scourge of the SuperPACs

CHARLESTON, South Carolina — Were it not such a travesty of democracy, the race for the Republican nomination for president would be entertaining. In a way, as a New Yorker pundit wrote, the ins and outs, ups and downs of the polls and the personal clashes between the four candidates who are still standing is “fun.” But as soon as you put all the factors into perspective, you can’t dismiss the often hate-filled infighting as foolishness, although that is what it often appears to be.

To begin with, we, the long-suffering taxpayers, were presented with a clown as a prospective candidate to lead the United States through the worst economic crisis since The Great Depression. He would also be expected to take over as commander-in-chief of US Armed Forces spread over huge expanses of the world already fighting one hot war in Afghanistan while withdrawing from Iraq yet facing the prospect of major and minor conflicts wherever you care to look on this troubled globe.

The clown’s name was Herman Cain, whose chief qualifications for what has been described as The Worst Job in the World were that he ran a pizza business, was black, a snappy dresser and a born showman. Mr. Cain suspended his campaign after being accused (among other things) of putting his hand up a woman’s skirt and pushing her face in the direction of his crotch — quoting a guest who appeared on MSNBC, the left-of-centre cable channel. He is still happily clowning. He turned up again in Charleston, my home town, last month for a rally in support of Stephen Colbert, a comedian who hails from here. Actually Mr. Colbert, who is the comedic host of The Colbert Report which is twinned with Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show on the cable channel Comedy Central, is much more than a comedian. He has assumed the character of a rightwing pundit, modelled loosely on Fox News’ bullying talking heads and uses this role to puncture pomposity and ridicule ridiculousness. Urbane, cosmopolitan and now famous, he has mastered satire to become the modern day (post-modern, if you insist) equivalent of Jonathan Swift.

His current target is the outrageous, anti-democratic use of money to influence elections by means of a system of bribery known as a SuperPAC. Those last three initials stand for Political Action Committee. Thanks to Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in a Supreme Court ruling (Citizens’ United 2010), huge sums of money can be given, often secretly, to candidates in federal elections by channelling what are essentially bribes through the SuperPACs. This gets around the 2,500 dollar limit on individual contributions as well as the limits placed on political spending by corporations, institutions, unions, foundations and other organizations with electoral war chests.

In our state primary, we saw Newt Gingrich soar back into prominence when casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife gave 10 million dollars to the SuperPAC “Winning Our Future,” which backs Newt Gingrich for the GOP nomination. You can see the attack ads produced for Newt that did Mitt in: http://www.winningourfuture.com/

That hunk of money gave Mr. Gingrich a double digit victory over Mitt Romney, up to then the front runner and “sure thing” nominee in the eyes of the Republican Party establishment.

Mitt came back in Florida thanks to the millions in his SuperPAC, called “Reviving Our Future.” Here’s a sample of the attack ads that revived Mitt’s hopes: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/romney-versus-gingrich-a-super-pacs-over-the-top-ad/ 2011/12/20/gIQAeJQn7O–blog.html Mitt’s SuperPAC comeback did not last. Rick Santorum the former senator, who has been running third and fourth in the primaries since his slim win in a recount in Iowa, gave former Massachusetts governor Romney a drubbing in three states. He won the nonbinding primary in Missouri, as well as in Minnesota and Colorado, which hold caucuses.

It was a startling turn of events because Mr. Santorum had placed fourth in Nevada only a few days earlier. One explanation of the turnaround was the billionaire investor friend of Mr. Santorum who stood behind the candidate when he gave his victory speech in Missouri. Foster Friess is the principal funder of the SuperPAC that backs Santorum, called “The Red White and Blue Fund.”

Mr. Colbert set out to expose the latent corruption that stems from the monetary power of SuperPACS by forming his own SuperPAC and producing attack ads against the other candidates.

It is called “Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow.” His fans were so enthusiastic about his “faux” SuperPAC that they sent in around one million dollars to pay for the ads. Colbert explained on his show that he decided “Colbert Nation could have a voice, in the form of my voice, shouted through a megaphone made of cash ... the American dream. And that dream is simple. That anyone, no matter who they are, if they are determined, if they are willing to work hard enough, someday they could grow up to create a legal entity which could then receive unlimited corporate funds, which could be used to influence our elections.”

The joke was such a hit that Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi produced her own attack ad — tongue in cheek blasting Colbert: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLH0fT3mbe0

However, it soon became clear that joking about SuperPACS is no joke. Terrified at the prospect of facing SuperPACS funded by Republican billionaires, the Democrats announced that President Barack Obama has suspended his opposition to SuperPACs and is encouraging donors to contribute to “Priorities USA,” a SuperPAC run by two former White House staffers.

Once again in politics, pragmatism has trumped principles and money has undermined democracy. Obama aides insist that after the coming election he will fight for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court ruling. Nancy Pelosi’s push for the DISCLOSE Act, which she announced, is supposed to be the first step in the battle to ban, eventually, SuperPACS.

The money from billionaires that goes into the SuperPACs is an investment they make to secure access in the future. It is a form of bribery and the practice should be abolished. It has also made election campaigns mean and nasty even among candidates of the same party. All four surviving candidates have stooped to gutter politics, disturbing old GOP hands like Richard W. Carlson, who was director of the Voice of America under Ronald Reagan. Writing in my local weekly, the Charleston Mercury, he grumbled, “This Republican primary season, with its extraordinary popularity swings and candidates chewing at each other’s legs like angry badgers is the oddest, most befuddling race of my lifetime.”

Worse, I fear, is to come. When the Republicans no longer have each other to gore, they will be able to concentrate on President Obama. He will need more than a SuperPAC to ward off their attacks.