It's a remarkable statement: "For too long, some in this country have been deprived of full participation in the political process," [Republican Senator Mitch] McConnell said. "With today's monumental decision, the Supreme Court took an important step in the direction of restoring the First Amendment rights of these groups."
It sounds like the Civil Rights movement all over again until you fill in the antecedents: "For too long, [corporations] in this country have been deprived of full participation in the political process," McConnell said. "With today's monumental decision, the Supreme Court took an important step in the direction of restoring the First Amendment rights of these [companies]."
The Supreme Court decision in question says there is no limit to the amount of money corporations can spend on political advertising. The 5-4 decision undercuts 100 years of legal precedent and opens the way for large companies to (yet more effectively) drown out the opinions of mere individuals, who cannot spend the same massive amounts for access to the airwaves. Worse, it enables them to make credible threats to spend money opposing candidates who don't vote their way.
The decision was based on the premise that the First Amendment applies not only to individuals but to associations of people, and that a corporation is an association. Critics of the decision point out that Exxon Mobil is hardly the same as the Knights of Columbus or the League of Women Voters, chiefly because Exxon Mobil's sole reason for being is to make money, not seek any sort of greater good for citizens.
"In the complicated world of the First Amendment, the line between corporations and people is one of the easiest to draw," University of Pennsylvania Law School professor Kermit Roosevelt III wrote in an editorial in the Christian Science Monitor. "Unfortunately, it is a line that the Court has just erased."
McConnell likely retreated to the euphemistic "some" in his statement because he is aware that saying just who that "some" really is wouldn't play even to conservative constituents, underlining that this shouldn't be a partisan issue. Does anybody on any part of the political spectrum really want more corporate influence in politics? Who is willing to take up that cause in anything other than McConnell's disingenuous and obfuscating fashion?
If that's the way it's to be, there's a massive political vacuum in need of filling, and someone is going to fill it. This cause could unite some pretty strange bedfellows—even stalwart Republican John McCain has showed up to express displeasure. Just as the Strange Bedfellows coalition, formed some time ago around the issue of domestic spying, brought together Ron Paul and the ACLU, this issue has the potential to engage folks who don't often agree.
If, instead of continuing at full steam into their current Scott Brown-fueled disintegration, the Democrats want a new rallying point that can play to liberals, centrists and many conservatives, they've got it in this issue. McConnell is pitching a fast ball they can knock over the fence. It will be interesting to see if they bother to swing.
