It was hailed by some as a victory for free speech. Former Speaker of the House and presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich described it as a "fight for the First Amendment rights of every American." But the watershed Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010, which struck down any law that limited the amount of money that independent groups could spend in a campaign, has reminded us all of why politicians are so maligned.
First, there is Gingrich. After vocally supporting the Citizens United ruling, Gingrich was absolutely pummeled with negative ads by Restore Our Future, a super PAC that supports former governor Mitt Romney. It is estimated that 45 percent of all political advertisements leading up to the Jan. 3 Iowa caucus were anti-Gingrich ads, the majority of which were paid for by Restore Our Future. Gingrich, who had been surging in many polls before the ad deluge, finished a distant fourth in Iowa.
There's nothing like a crushing defeat to make a politician into a crybaby. Gingrich referred to the ads as "mud" and "junk." Frankly, if Gingrich doesn't enjoy having tens of millions of dollars spent to derail his campaign, he shouldn't have supported the Supreme Court ruling that made that kind of fundraising possible. He also should acknowledge the huge amount of mud being slung on his behalf.
The pro-Gingrich super PAC Winning Our Future spent $2.93 million on anti-Romney and pro-Gingrich ads in South Carolina, where Gingrich achieved his only win of the primary season thus far.
Technically, super PACs are forbidden from coordinating with any campaign or candidate. But when Romney and Gingrich claim, with remarkably straight faces, that they have no control over what their super PACs are doing, one has to wonder just how stupid they think we are. Restore Our Future is run almost exclusively by former Romney campaign aides. Not shockingly, the pro-Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our Future, is full of Gingrich groupies.
Only a politician could whine about super PACs in one state while riding them to victory in another.
The super PACs are able to make both parties look bad, as President Obama learned recently. Obama was a vocal critic of Citizens United. In his 2010 State of the Union address, he expressed his belief that the ruling will "open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections."
That was 2010. But earlier this month, the president had his top surrogates lobbying their richest supporters to dump money into Priorities USA Action, a super PAC that supports him. This is pure hypocrisy. It's akin to a company protesting federal bailouts and then demanding one for itself.
According to the Obama campaign, the move was necessary in order to combat the vast quantities of money super PACs supporting the eventual GOP nominee will raise. The president's campaign manager Jim Messina said the Democrats cannot "unilaterally disarm" in the advertising battle against Republicans. The idea is that America needs Obama to win in order to have a chance at undoing the damage done by Citizens United, and in order to win, he must play the dirty super PAC game and defeat the Republicans who support the ruling.
That all may or may not be true, but what ever happened to sticking to principles?
Americans look at Washington and see nothing but division and political gamesmanship, and at a critical moment when the president could have taken a stand and looked like the adult in the room, he didn't. Instead, he resorted to the cynical backroom Washington politics he campaigned so eloquently against in 2008. I believe the President could have gained far more than fundraising if he had stood by his principles and denounced super PACs. Americans would have respected a man who saw something that was wrong and refused to be a part of it.
Instead we are left with a choice between "D" and "R." We are left with candidates, and a president, who say one thing and do another. Thanks to the rise of super PACs, Americans are seeing the very worst of our politicians.
Garret Johnson '14 is double concentrating in biology and French and has not decided which hypocrite he will be supporting in November.
