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Karen Tumulty has a good, comprehensive rundown of the GOP’s primary tumult (too easy) in the Washington Post.
This part’s particularly interesting:
Republicans celebrated two years ago when the Supreme Court issued a ruling that allowed groups, corporations, unions and individuals to spend unlimited amounts on campaigns, as long as those efforts were not coordinated with the campaigns.
They now realize that the new unregulated money is one of the main reasons, whether for good or bad, that the race continues and remains so unpredictable.
Before that ruling, when a campaign ran out of money, the candidate usually dropped out. Fundraising networks were also the tool by which the establishment bestowed its benediction upon a favorite contender and crowded everyone else out.
The most spectacularly successful example of that strategy in recent years was the one employed in 2000 by George W. Bush and the “Pioneers,” who each committed to raise $100,000 toward his election. They did it the old-fashioned way, by bringing in 100 checks for $1,000 each.
But that kind of money looks like chump change compared with, say, the $11 millionthat Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his family have donated to a super PAC that supports Newt Gingrich. Without those contributions, it is hard to see how Gingrich’s candidacy would be alive today.
When Citizens United first came down, there was a lot of sturm und drang about how the GOP would use the new rules to beat up on Obama and Democratic candidates in general. I’m not sure people gave enough thought to how these rules would affect primary races, or to the fact that the first party to really be affected by them would be the GOP, since they actually have to choose a candidate for 2012.
Zooming out a little, it’s hard to comprehend the magnitude of potential for missed opportunity for the GOP in November. The party has a perfect chance to forcefully swat away everything Obama was supposed to have represented in 2008 — a grand revitalization of American liberalism, the permanent engagement of millions of left-leaning young voters who had never before cared about politics, the notion that Americans would hold Republicans accountable for the failings of supply-side economic policies. How often do you get an opportunity like that, to dramatically undo one of your most painful defeats?*
In general, I’m much more sympathetic to explanations of electoral outcomes that invoke big, cyclical forces mostly beyond human control than to those which appeal to “turning points” in campaigns, to gaffes and big, dramatic moments. But still — if Obama is reelected, the GOP will have a long list of obvious blunders to peruse wincingly over the next four years.
* veering dangerously close to New England Patriots territory here
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TCinLA on February 12, 2012 1:05 PM:
Watching idiots, assholes, morons and fools get what they deserve is fun. Adding in the opportunity to have the rest of the country laugh at them is even better. There's nothing sadder than the idiot too stupid to know they're an idiot - like Nooootie and his Stepford robot standing next to him all the time.
James on February 12, 2012 1:11 PM:
Hmmm. Haley Barbour may have something there:
(I quote)
Barbour said, is that “some voters are seeking purity in their choice. In politics, purity is a dead-dog loser. You need unity, and purity is the enemy of unity.”
(unquote)
Are you listening, liberal purists?
...no, I didn't think so.
Wildson on February 12, 2012 1:11 PM:
Here's how I see the Citizen's United will end up:
Obama encourages super pacs for democratics (fight fire with fire)
Obama blows out Romney...
GOP will complain about superpacs (they will be against it after they will were for it, like with TARP)
GOP will push to end superpacs (since they make laws to benefit their chances of getting elected)
Solution to problem...
Mimikatz on February 12, 2012 1:20 PM:
The biggest missed opportunity came when Mitch McConnell declared that defeating Obama was the GOP's first, second and third priority. That, along with their visceral hatreds and fears, led all too many of them down a path of radical obstruction. They then mistook the shift of a few angry independents and the predictable lack of interest of new voters in the midterms for a radical swing in the electorate. Now they are saddled with a bunch of crazy representatives and an even crazier base who think their views mirror the electorate.
This is the milieu within which those eccentric millionaires and billionaires are operating. Vanity candidates and vanity funders, and a venal and unscrupulous class of operatives eager to take their money and turn it into swill for the base.
Obama will be the calm, cool and competent leader, smiling and exhorting the sane 70% through the rest of the year, and barring economic catastrophe or war he will win. And even if catastrophe happens, remember he is who people picked to lead us out of the last one we faced. Does Mitt Romney or gods help us Little Rickey look like a better gamble?
Ron Byers on February 12, 2012 1:52 PM:
Mimikatz
We can't overlook the foreign countries and foreign political parties who are probably buying time as well. I don't know for sure if the Israelis are actively promoting their positions via Citizens United, but does anybody think for a moment that Adelson would be supporting Newt if he didn't think it would benefit Likud and their hard right vision for the middle east.
If the foreign governments and political parties aren't currently funnelling money to some candidate or the other via super pacs they soon will be.
cmdicely on February 12, 2012 2:02 PM:
Democrats also have to choose lots of candidates for 2012, and Citizen's United doesn't only affect participation in Presidential campaigns. And I don't think progressive values benefit at all from the fact that wealthy elites also have their already disproportional power on election outcomes reinforced in primary elections as well as general elections by Citizen's United. (The particular arrangement of circumstances might mean that there is a short-term institutional benefit for the Democratic Party in the context of the 2012 Presidential election, but that's likely to be a hollow benefit given the effect on down ballot races and the fact that politicians at all levels who want to stay in office or advance will be acting based on its predictable effects in future races.)
jonthebru on February 12, 2012 2:06 PM:
It couldn't happen to nicer people.
dalloway on February 12, 2012 2:26 PM:
If we are so unfortunate as to suffer the sale of the 2012 general election to the Koch brothers and the coronation of Little Ricky in the Oval Office, you'll see a campaign for a constitutional amendment banning corporate money that will make the Wisconsin recall look like a garden club election.
schtick on February 12, 2012 2:32 PM:
Sometimes, you get what you ask for....and deserve.
max on February 12, 2012 2:40 PM:
To funny. Our Jurassic Supreme Court justice, Antonin Scalia, discovers the timeless law of unintended consequences for boneheaded decisions.
Trollop on February 12, 2012 2:54 PM:
It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of reckless and wild dogs
David on February 12, 2012 3:24 PM:
Jesse, your posts are always singalarly insightful (way too easy, and not very clever).
Zorro on February 12, 2012 7:13 PM:
Note, though, that all we've seen so far is that the unregulated money hasn't been directed at Obama yet. Because, believe me, as soon as a GOP nominee is chosen, that money will be turned on Obama with a vengeance, and it won't be pretty.
-Z
bassicdave on February 13, 2012 12:02 AM:
Correct, Zorro. What's $100 million to the Koch Bros?
bob h on February 13, 2012 7:39 AM:
I've always thought Citizens had its origins in Obama's big, grassroots haul in 2008. The five Republicans on the Court resolved to do something to restore balance, and probably convinced themselves that they had done the nation a favor, as in Bush v. Gore. The scheme was probably confirmed with Republican politicians at Federalist Society meetings or Koch Brothers gatherings at Rancho wherever.
max on February 13, 2012 9:05 AM:
Boh H: "I've always thought Citizens had its origins in Obama's big, grassroots haul in 2008. The five Republicans on the Court resolved to do something to restore balance, and probably convinced themselves that they had done the nation a favor, as in Bush v. Gore. The scheme was probably confirmed with Republican politicians at Federalist Society meetings or Koch Brothers gatherings at Rancho wherever."
I agree, and Scalia and Thomas, or his wife, the family spokesperson, were probably in attandance at some Rethugathon. Something had to be done to squelch the fundraising uprising by the Dems and Citizens was the perfect vehicle.
MNRD on February 13, 2012 4:25 PM:
The notion of the GOP's "missed opportunity" in 2012 is a mirage. Jesse, you are making the classic mistake of separating what the GOP did to ITSELF in order to make President Obama vulnerable from the fact of the President's vulnerability itself. The only way that the GOP was able to make this President this vulnerable was by simultaneously savaging their own party brand. Yes, they damaged the President, but in the process they damaged themselves even more.
Just look at the empirical evidence: Can you deny that the GOP has driven its own approval numbers even lower than they drove the President's approval numbers? Can you deny that this GOP Congress has the lowest approval ratings ever measured for a Congress? What kind of an "opportunity" do those numbers represent for the GOP?
Bottom line: If the GOP had not done so much damage to their own brand and if the President had nevertheless somehow wound up this vulnerable, then the GOP would be in a better position to prevail in 2012.
smartalek on February 18, 2012 5:16 PM:
"Can you deny that this GOP Congress has the lowest approval ratings ever measured for a Congress? What kind of an "opportunity" do those numbers represent for the GOP?" max 2/13/12 9:05AM
I hope and pray (in my quiet little agnostic way) that you're right; I deeply fear that you may not be.
Survey after survey show that large numbers of Americans -- possibly even a majority -- literally do not know that the Publicans have full control of the House, and de facto control of the Senate (thru their historic abuses of filibuster threats, "holds," and other Senate rules, and the collusion of far too many "moderate," "centrist," conservaDems).
Their accurate assessment of the miserable state of the current Congress thus won't necessarily redound to the benefit of Dem's' electoral prospects, because the blame won't be focused where it's warranted.
And that's before we add in the effects of the corporate mass-media's constant and deliberate distortions of the information on which the voters will be basing their choices; the impact of massive Publican gerrymandering and even more massive voter-disenfranchising; and perceptions among the Democratic base (rightly or otherwise; that's a separate discussion) that Obama and the 2008-2010 Dem's didn't live up to their end of the 2008 electoral bargain.
The one thing that really does give me hope is the fact -- hardly-ever mentioned in the corporate media, AFAICT -- that Publican participation in their primaries / caucuses has generally been steady or even down from '08.
On the other-other hand, if what we wind up with is another term of Obama, but this time with an actual, factual (as opposed to just practical) Publican majority in the Senate, and a still-Publican House, I'm not at all sure that will be a Good Thing... for the same reason.
Jane&Joe Sixpak will hear the Publican plaints, Obama will doubtless fold even more than he's done so far, and Jane&Joe could easily go all-Publican in '16.
Since even 8 years of GWB obviously still hasn't gotten through to Jane&Joe that EVERYthing the current crop of Publicans stand for is catastrophically wrong, maybe they need another dose.
God help us all.