Monday, November 12, 2012

Citizens United vindicated?


This week, James Bopp, the lawyer who successfully defended the Citizens United case before the Supreme Court, claimed that Obama's victory has vindicated Bopp's position.  "The lesson here is all the hype over independent spending was just completely overblown...  Nobody can buy an election."  (Full article at Mother Jones).  Bopp seems to be referring to the fact that Sheldon Adelson, Karl Rove and Linda McMahon all spent enormous amounts of money on campaigns that lost miserably.  Bopp takes this as an indication that he was right to defend the pouring of unlimited and undeclared money into campaigns.  The problem is that the Citizens United case was about constitutionality, not the affects of such a policy.  The question is rather more philosophical than practical--just because one can inject enormous sums of so-called dark money into an election without influencing the outcome of said election doesn't mean you should be permitted to do so, or to use Jeff Goldblum's words from Jurassic Park, Bopp was "so preoccupied with whether or not they could, [he] didn't stop to think if they should."

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