Posted on 11/22/2014 10:34:12 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
It’s one thing for Iowans to tolerate the secret money provocateurs whose barrage of attacks demeans our elections, caucuses and voters.
It’s another thing to warmly invite them to the state.
Rep. Steve King is partnering with Citizens United – yes, that Citizens United — whose Supreme Court case opened the floodgates of secret money determining — not just influencing — Iowa’s elections. Need proof? More than $40 million was spent in advertising for the recent Iowa Senate election. Outside special interest groups provided more than 80 percent of that.
Iowa Republican strategist Tim Albrecht confirmed that outside money now drives the campaigns. “It's not that the playing field isn't level between Democrats and Republicans, because it is. The problem is the playing field isn't level between candidates wishing to do the right thing and those outside groups who can completely swallow them whole with outside money.”
Secret money now makes up the bulk of political investment in our biggest races, filling our televisions and mailboxes with truthless swill that works wonderfully to drive away voters. Voter turnout wasn’t down this year because of vague trends. It was down because of tens of millions of dollars in secret money TV ads that transformed our nation’s governance into a circus sideshow.
Now King and Citizens United have teamed up to present a Republican caucus candidate revue Jan. 24 in Des Moines. The secret money moguls have lured the GOP’s elite: Sens. Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Rick Santorum; Mike Huckabee, Carly Fiorina and a promise of more to come.
Citizens United is run by David Bossie, a conservative fire-starter who built his reputation dogging the Clintons on the Whitewater scandal back in the 1990s. His tactics proved too rough for some conservatives who condemned him after he abruptly resigned as chief investigator of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Bossie kept up his anti-Clinton tirade, right through the secretly funded documentary at the center of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United case.
Bossie’s interpretation of free speech is the poison that is ruining our nation.
King holds high hopes for his poisonous partnership.
"It'll be an event that all the nation stops and looks at," King told The Des Moines Register. "What gets said and done, some of those things will be driving the conversation in the country."
Rather than being the GOP kingmaker to which he aspires, King is relegating himself as a secret money pawn willing to be played at Iowans’ expense. His invitation to Citizens United to set off the the Iowa agenda should appall any voter sick and tired of the secret money assault on our democracy.
How sick are they? A Huffington Post national poll this week found that 53 percent of Americans support or strongly support limits on campaign spending; 63 percent believe PAC campaign spending had some or a great deal of influence on this month’s elections.
Fifty-nine percent said campaign cash – not candidates, their records or attributes – win elections.
That’s the backdrop for King’s partnership with the most notorious secret money outfit of them all. King extends his warm Iowa welcome to the harbingers of our democracy’s destruction.
Mike Huckabee? Rick Santorum? Carly Fiorina? Hahahahahaha! Elite? In what decade?
I do not support campaign finance limits, but I do support a law that requires you to prove your claims in your campaign ads or you get fined!!!
Wow a bare majority, 53% want to limit free expression? Commendable, Editors.
Now how about some editorials on politicians who buy votes with other peoples’ tax monies?
Rep. Steve King is partnering with Citizens United – yes, that Citizens United — whose Supreme Court case opened the floodgates of secret money..........
Bossie’s interpretation of free speech is the poison that is ruining our nation.
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This is rich LOL. Oh the irony. I suggest that anyone who doesn’t know about the “Colorado Model” do a search for “Rocky Mountain Heist” and watch it.
Four rich liberals got together and made a plan to turn Colorado from red to blue(it was to be a model for Texas and Virginia next). They brought in the usual leftist tools/organizations including the Educators (useful idiots) to help. They had regular meetings for updates and plans.
All of a sudden tons of money was used to swamp elections and smear Republicans. Lawsuits were filed (shades of Tom Delay and Sarah Palin). Republicans who had held office for years were under attack and had no money to match the overwhelming liberal largess.
That’s why Citizen’s United was formed. To counter the erroneous message coming from the liberals and their secret plans. The libs did get a Demo Governor, and legislature, and passed a bunch of crap laws (just like Obama)that the citizens didn’t like.
Gun control was the last straw. The citizens were calling and complaining, but the legislative Leaders told the reps to ignore their constituents(sound familiar), and passed the laws anyway. Recall elections were initiated, and the Supreme Court made it’s ruling on Citizen’s United, so now the citizens have a way to counter the liberal’s money machine.
The political speech that is poisoning our nation starts with the White Hutt and spews forth daily from Pelosi, Reid, the Race Baiters and all the commie useful idots. I don’t know much about Bossie, but I sure know his opposition and I hope he sinks them and their plotting evil utopian commie plots forever more.
Prove? To whose satisfaction? A new government board? Appointed by whom? This is just another recipe for tyranny and another affront to the concept of free speech.
Crybabies
Like the unions. They are just wishing to do the right thing. And the greenies, because they love Gaia, they just want to do the right thing. And the hollyweird crowd they want to help us all share the, "love". What a load!
They are still bitter about losing their monopoly on information especially right before an election when they used to publish their hit pieces and the candidates could do nothing about it. Welcome to the internet, bozos!
No you have the FCC and The Stations who run the Ads!!!
Quad-City Times editorials reflect the opinion of the editorial board. The board formally meets 9 a.m. Wednesdays.
One small question: where do these people get the paper and ink to print their newspaper???Does some individual or corporation simply fund this operation? No? Are you sure? How about the money that bought their press and the building to put it in? That came from the Tooth Fairy?
The header mentions “Advertising sales.” Fine. Advertising what? Political candidates? Nothing wrong with that.
When you boil it all down, this newspaper gets plenty of money, and it actually isn’t important where it came from - it still is spending money to promote certain opinions and attitudes. The planted axiom in any discussion critical of the Citizens United case is that the person or organization doing the criticizing is objective. And that, therefore, the money they spend on paper and ink (etc, etc) is pure as the wind-driven snow. Take away the presumption of objectivity, and their whole discussion would be ridiculous.
And where does the conceit of “journalistic objectivity” come from? It came from the Associated Press. They needed it, because without that conceit the whole idea of trusting news reports from people whom the editor of any given newspaper may not even know seems kind of silly. And the AP used the rationale that since its members were (actually were, initially) fractiously independent, the AP itself was “objective.” And it is easy to see that it didn’t take a whole lot in the way of factual basis to sustain an idea when the full propaganda power of the AP and its membership was behind it. FReepers of all people know about that.
The reality is, of course, that nobody can know that they are objective, no matter how many friends may agree with him or her. So anyone who claims actually to be - as distinguished from trying to be - objective is not objective about themselves.
The FCC is a bunch of bureaucrats appointed by the President. Do you really want Obama appointees deciding whether our ads against Democrats pass muster and can be aired?
And the stations? You do realize they *are* the MSM, right? You want the MSM deciding whether our claims are "proven" - and whether we are allowed to run ads that run counter to their narrative.
Have you thought this through even a little?
I guess we can just have the Democrats Lie about everything and do nothing then!!
There must be ramifications for Lying to the public about something.. Since it is a political add you can’t sue for defamation of character!! So let the FCC go after political ads if one of the candidates complains to them.. All you have to do is have the facts on your side!!!
I’m not sure you actually read my earlier posts to you about this.
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