By Paul Jossey
Plutocrats, these “reformers” counsel—unsatisfied with their already enormous wealth—are trying to “buy” America and “drown out” the voice of the little guy. Money buys “access” and “undue influence,” corrupting the system and threating the very foundation of democracy. Indeed so dire the threat, it can only be remedied by overturning a key a portion of the Bill of Rights—an unprecedented move according to famed First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams who testified at the same hearing.
Mr. Reid is, of course, wrong. Money does factor into electoral and legislative outcomes, but it is far from the determining or even most important factor. And proof is more abundant than a recent Virginia primary where the loser outspent his opponent 26-1. In 2012, only 20% of competitive Senate campaigns with an overall spending advantage won. The latest social science bolsters this thesis, a fact acknowledged from as diverse sources as former Obama White House Counsel Bob Bauer and the First Amendment friendly Center for Competitive Politics.
But unlike Mr. Reid’s empirically challenged posturing, genuine threats to the American political system exist. IRS Commissioner Jack Koskinen recently exemplified one in Congressional testimony about missing documents House investigators had subpoenaed months ago. Mr. Koskinen sat defiant as he ducked, parried, and obfuscated. His answers, and the arrogance with which he conveyed them, are emblematic of a bureaucracy whose dual mission is self-preservation and the ardor for power; what Peggy Noonan called “the ongoing shakedown operation that is the relationship of the individual and the federal government.”
