Posted on 05/19/2014 3:18:25 PM PDT by jazusamo
It's no longer news when Majority Leader Harry Reid takes to the floor of the Senate to denounce the Koch brothers. But most Americans probably don't know that Reid and many of his Democratic colleagues now want to amend the U.S. Constitution in far-reaching ways to put an end to the conservative billionaires' political influence.
"The shadowy Koch brothers are attempting ... a hostile takeover of American democracy," Reid charged recently. "No one should be able to pump unlimited funds into a political campaign."
Reid urged his fellow lawmakers to support a proposed constitutional amendment, written by Democratic Sen. Tom Udall and co-sponsored by 40 of the Senate's 55 Democrats, that would give Congress the right to regulate all political contributions and all spending of any kind in all federal elections. (It would also give states the power to do the same in state elections.) The Supreme Court has held such far-reaching restrictions to be unconstitutional, which is why Reid wants to take the extreme step of changing the nation's founding document.
"Amending our Constitution is not something we take lightly," Reid said. "But the flood of special interest money into our American democracy is one of the greatest threats our system of government has ever faced."
The Udall amendment is brief. This is the heart of it:
"Congress shall have power to regulate the raising and spending of money and in-kind equivalents with respect to federal elections, including setting limits on (1) the amount of contributions to candidates for nomination for election to, or for election to, federal office, and (2) the amount of funds that may be spent by, in support of, or in opposition to such candidates."
The amendment would grant incredible power to Congress: the authority to regulate every dollar raised and every dollar spent by every campaign and every outside group in every federal race in America. It would do the same for non-monetary, or "in-kind" contributions -- that is, when a person or organization contributes goods or services to a campaign. If Reid had his way, the U.S. Constitution would include the phrase "in-kind equivalents."
The Udall amendment is not some sort of eccentric crusade. It is the latest in a long line of efforts to limit campaign contributions and spending. And liberals have been particularly angry recently after the results of the McCutcheon and Citizens United cases.
But the Udall amendment is also part of a Democratic 2014 midterm electoral strategy that focuses on the Kochs as stand-in villains representing all of America's economic ills.
Building on the Occupy Wall Street movement and the successful portrayal of Mitt Romney as a plutocrat in the 2012 presidential election, wrote Washington Post liberal blogger Greg Sargent recently, Democratic strategists now believe "struggling swing voters are more open to the argument that the influence of big money in politics is one of the key reasons (along with other long-running trends) for rising inequality and a key cause of why the economy is rigged against them and for the wealthy ... "
It seems a long shot, but Democrats are facing a pretty tough environment this year. Maybe it's the best they have.
Still, proposing to amend the Constitution is a serious thing. Yes, it has been done for frivolous purposes in the past: In 1989, George H.W. Bush supported a proposed amendment to ban flag burning. But now, Reid, Charles Schumer and other top Democrats pledge that the Udall amendment will be debated in the full Senate and receive a vote -- and perhaps several votes -- this year. They are serious.
After Reid's announcement of support, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a longtime veteran of the campaign finance wars, expressed outrage, calling the amendment "an all-out assault on the right to free speech" and "the ultimate act of radicalism."
Privately, some Hill Republicans see the move as a Democratic effort to bait GOP leaders into defending the Kochs. Which would of course be followed by more Democratic denunciations of the Kochs.
As far as the amendment itself is concerned, there's not a chance in the world Democrats will succeed. Amending the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote in both House and Senate, and then approval by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states. It won't happen.
But the very fact that Democrats plan to seriously consider a constitutional amendment born of an election-year strategy to silence a pair of big conservative contributors suggests how far Reid and his colleagues would go to crack down on political adversaries. Is any temporary partisan advantage worth such a radical step?
Not if you understand how political theater can influence voting in a close election year. It has no chance of passing but the media will pounce on the Koch brothers in typical demagogic fashion. There will never be any mention that the Koch's have donated about $30 million to conservative causes while Tom Steyer just promised $100 million to Democrats. That's in addition to the multiple millions George Soros, Hollywood moguls, Silicon Valley billionaires, Bill Gates and other rich Leftist elitists have pumped into Democrat campaigns.
The Democrats want to amend the Constitution not so much to stop the Koch brothers as to stop the average American citizen.
Amend the constitution? Bring it on, Harry. You have to get the states (3/4 of them) to agree with it. Don’t you know ANYTHING, Harry?
“No one should be able to pump unlimited funds into a political campaign.”
That include your union buddies, Harry? What a POS.
Reid urged his fellow lawmakers to support a proposed constitutional amendment, written by Democratic Sen. Tom Udall and co-sponsored by 40 of the Senate's 55 Democrats, that would give Congress the right to regulate all political contributions and all spending of any kind in all federal elections. (It would also give states the power to do the same in state elections.) The Supreme Court has held such far-reaching restrictions to be unconstitutional, which is why Reid wants to take the extreme step of changing the nation's founding document.No one who supports this proposal is anything but an enemy of the people and Constitution of the United States.
We need a nutjob in the GOP to start screaming about the Soros boogey man at every opportunity.
Anyone who thinks the democrats are above an amendment
outlawing other political parties, hasn’t been paying
attention to what the democrats are saying.
Another glaring example of liberal projection. It is not the Koch brothers who are pouring unlimited funds into political campaigns; that is George Soros, who is the liberal sugar daddy.
Don’t know what they are worried about. The Koch brothers don’t seem to be making much headway.
That include your union buddies, Harry?“No one should be able to pump unlimited funds into a political campaign.”
The fallacy in all of “Campaign Finance Reform” regulation is that it presupposes that the government can distinguish clearly between objective fact and political opinion. The First Amendment does not make that distinction; the First Amendment applies to your speech whether you are reading the telephone book, reading the Nicene Creed, or declaiming your allegiance to a political candidate. Or anything in between.The trouble with journalism, a.k.a. “the media,” is that all major journalism outlets are associated. In consequence of which, all major journalism outlets go along and get along with each other, and there is no ideological competition among them. How are they associated? By their membership in the Associated Press (and/or any other wire services). Why is their ideological temperament “liberal?” Because socialism is the conceit that critics are superior to performers - and journalists do nothing but criticize. Their preference for reporting bad news makes that inevitable.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
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