American plutocracy's greatest champion thinks the McCutcheon decision is awesome:
Party All The Time...Then along came the Supreme Court’s McCutcheon decision this week. It has been greeted with cries of horror because it may increase the amount of money in politics. But this is the wrong metric. There will always be money in politics; it’s a pipe dream to think otherwise. The crucial question is where is the money flowing.The McCutcheon decision is a rare win for the parties. It enables party establishments to claw back some of the power that has flowed to donors and “super PACs.” It effectively raises the limits on what party establishments can solicit. It gives party leaders the chance to form joint fund-raising committees they can use to marshal large pools of cash and influence. McCutcheon is a small step back toward a party-centric system....Since the progressive era, campaign reformers have intuitively distrusted parties. These reformers seem driven by a naïve hope that they can avoid any visible concentration of power. But their approach to reform has manifestly failed. By restricting parties, they just concentrated power in ways that are much worse.
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Be sure not to miss this colossal load of bullshit from Peter Beinart.
``The GOP’s increased reliance on big donors also makes it less likely the party will craft new policies that appeal to the blue-collar voters it needs to win. For years, the smartest conservative intellectuals—from Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam to David Frum to David Brooks—have been imploring the GOP to realize that it’s not 1980 anymore. Government power over the economy has declined; economic insecurity has grown. In this new world, Republicans can’t simply promise to get government out of the way. They need to suggest ways government can help people get ahead. And just as Bill Clinton showed in the early 1990s that he was not beholden to the cultural left, Republicans must find ways to show they are not beholden to the oligarchic right. That’s going to be harder now.''
This decision was so predictable, and so depressing, as were Brooks' ridiculous comments.
I have the clear sense that he will come up with, or adopt, whatever gibberish he thinks will put lipstick on this pig. Missing from his analysis is any notion that "One man, one vote" as a democratic principle is being thrown under the bus. Plebs simply aren't important when you can hide behind "parties."
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