Corporations for Congress
Monday, February 8th, 2010
Liberals were not pleased with last month’s Supreme Court ruling in Citizen’s United v. Federal Election Commission that corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections was protected as free speech under the First Amendment and could not be limited by campaign finance laws. The constitutional logic of the case is fairly sound: in a recent New York Times article, Justice Thomas said the First Amendment’s protections applied “regardless of how people chose to assemble to participate in the political process:”
“If 10 of you got together and decided to speak, just as a group, you’d say you have First Amendment rights to speak and the First Amendment right of association,” he said. “If you all then formed a partnership to speak, you’d say we still have that First Amendment right to speak and of association.”
Cue doomsayers and pundit panic attacks. The obvious consequence is that corporations will now have an unrestrained ability to funnel cash into candidates who best serve their interests, which also means that anyone deadest on running for office (and remember, money talks more than talking points do) and looking to max out on campaign donations is more likely to pander to corporations than individual contributors (although the later model of asking for $5 donations from millions of people worked superbly for President Obama). The potential urgency of correction this mistake was highlighted by a point which President Obama incorrectly noted in his State of the Union address was that foreign corporations could influence American elections (they are actually barred from doing so by law).
Anyway, that’s not the point of this post. The point is that one corporation is trying to make things right, albeit with a hefty dose of good old-fashion tongue-in-cheek irony. Murray Hall Incorporated, a liberal PR firm recently announced that it would run in the Republican primary in Maryland’s 8th Congressional district. “Until now,” Murray Hill Inc. said in a statement, “corporate interests had to rely on campaign contributions and influence peddling to achieve their goals in Washington. But thanks to an enlightened Supreme Court, now we can eliminate the middle-man and run for office ourselves.”
Murry Hill released a faux campaign video dripping with irony last week on its newly created campaign website announcing its run:
“It’s a new day. Until now, corporations influenced politics with high-paid lobbyists and backroom deals. However, as much as corporate interests gave to politicians, we could never be absolutely sure they did our bidding. But today, thanks to the enlightened Supreme Court, corporations have all the rights the Founding Fathers meant for us.”
