Today the Supreme Court struck down a decades old cap on the total amount an individual can contribute to candidates in a two-year election cycle.
The lone dissenting voice, Justice Stephen G. Breyer stated, “If the court in Citizens United opened a door, today’s decision may well open a floodgate.”
The majority of the court in this case just don’t live in the real world. They say that corruption or the appearance of it is still an important government interest but that donating unlimited amounts and having access to politicians does not meet that standard. They obviously have yet to learn the repercussions of what happened from Citizen’s United. There may have not been a direct quid pro quo but there is an implicit one, which is what the justices fail to understand. When these candidates go to request such large donations, they will do whatever they can to curry favor or else possibly face that money going to their opponent.
What’s worse is the political shell game of money laundering through PACs that will occur now that aggregate limits have been abolished. A billionaire can now just write a $2,000,000 dollar check and split it between all candidates of a party, and various party committees.
Since the vast majority of congressional seats aren’t competitive, mostly due to gerrymandering, those in safe seats will just pass along their campaign cash to those in competitive districts. In this manner, a candidate could very well receive hundreds of thousands and possibly millions from a single donor that’s all white washed through other candidates and party committees.
It’s a mockery of campaign finance regulations. This ruling will likely lead to the complete abolition of campaign contribution limits by this court in the future. Democracy is now up for sale to the highest bidder.
