The Supreme Court struck down most of the McCain/Feingold Act as unconstitutional. No surprise that a liberal act would have the name McCain attached. Remember,as the Republican candidate, McCain ran as Obama lite, supporting health care reform, cap and trade, no drilling in the US, and immigration reform. No wonder his staff had to monitor Sarah Palin, she might make some astute conservative comments that would have conflicted with the McCain left wing staff positions.
Obmama and the left are very upset that the Supreme Court gave free speech back to politics. Obama even dressed them down in the State of the Union Message. Free speech can exist in Internet porn, strip clubs, or any other ACLU wish. But, woe to anyone who wants to stop the Federal Government from deciding what can or can’t be said by whom in political speech, writing, or in print or TV ads. Corporations must prove every word in every TV or print ad to meet the standards set by the FCC. But, a political candidate can run an ad that lies repeatedly about the opposition without any intervention from the FCC or FTC.
What does the Court ruling mean. There has not been a level playing field for the past 20 years. On one side there is a progressive, liberal media that supports like candidates and demeans unlike candidates. On that same liberal side there are unions that deduct from members’ pay monies to support liberal causes. On the other side there is campaign laws that have prevented business from supporting candidates and causes.
Obama and the Democrats are up in arms about this. Suddenly, at the worst possible time, the playing field gets flat for the 2010 elections. Barney Frank even threatened to use securities regulations to circumvent the Court ruling and stop corporate campaign contributions. Nice, Barney, maybe Massachusetts will throw your sad ass out this year. Now, if a candidate supports laws that meet the strategies of a corporation, the corporation can give financial support to the candidate. Support beyond the PAC money in the past. And, the corporation doesn’t even have to buy networks like GE did with NBC and MSNBC to support their candidates 24/7 like GE has been doing to get health care reform and environmental reform to foster their business interests in health care and green energy.
So, as the fall elections approach the damage the media can do to non-liberal candidates with their free new coverage can be offset by ads run by non-lieberal candidates paid for by corporate supporters.
This should be an interesting election season as we see these changes unfold. GE sells NBC to Comcast and they make the news into a version of Fox news. The Democrats lose the two biggest free political panderers for there product. Meanwhile, Republicans get campaign contributions to match those the Democrats get from their unions. Suddenly the field looks level at a time when we need it most.