Democrats try a new frame on opposition

Timothy Carney:

It's clear that President Obama has decided the Democrats should try to frame the 2010 elections as a battle against a GOP-corporate takeover of our democracy. This is a bogus line of attack/self-aggrandizement, and much of what I've written for the past 21 months shows how it's bogus.

Obama went after this issue again in his weekly address in which he critiqued the recent Supreme Court ruling striking down some bans on corporate, non-profit, and union political speech, and Jacob Sullum at Reason.com has a good response, that makes this important point: "No matter how shadowy or flush with corporate dollars an interest group is, the only thing Citizens United allowed it to do is speak. Advocacy has no impact unless it persuades people."

I think Sullum, however, is too categorical in dismissing the importance of the cui bono question (he calls it a "fallacy" to take that into account), and in fact, I think that one important critique of the Democrats' campaign finance bill is pointing out who benefits: politicians, political parties, and lobbyists.

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Democrats have a real problem in dealing with criticism, especially around election time. That is why they have used so much effort to suppress it in recent years. While they have made their complaint about "corporate" speech, there is very little of that taking place since corporations want to sell things to people regardless of political affiliation. Ford Does not want to alienate Democrats or Republicans so its ads focus on selling cars and not politics. Unions on the other hand don't mind alienating Republicans so they are much more partisan than corporations.

While there are some groups who are much more active in this election cycle, and we might not know the names of the donors, I am willing to speculate those donors are wealthy individuals with a passion for a political point of view. For a decade now, George Soros has been funding such operations for the Democrats. Now there are some conservatives stepping up to fight back. Democrats hate it when that happens.