As long as there are at least four candidates splitting the primary vote, Donald Trump only needs about 30 percent of the vote to obtain enough delegates to win the Republican nomination. (Wonks can find the math here.) The other candidates could quickly increase the chances for someone else to win by dropping out of the race, but that would require them to put their party ahead of their potential for higher speaking fees.
Ironically, the rule changes were supposed to prevent the "Republicans-eating-their-own" scenario that occurred when Mitt Romney faced too many primary challengers!
And, as we all know, Republicans don't typically embrace progressive ideas like putting the needs of the many before the greed of a few. After all, they are the party who continues to worship at the altar of Ayn Rand's "Virtue of Selfishness," and sticking with a failing campaign in the face of complete party destruction is pretty much the epitome of selfishness.
But, believe it or not, it gets even worse for Republicans.
The fact is, Ted Cruz, a crowded field and Ayn Rand's virtues are not even the RNC's biggest self-created problem. The real destroyer of the Republican Party will be the very campaign finance free-for-all they brought about by pushing for the 2010 Citizens United ruling.
On Jan. 21, 2010, in a 5-to-4 decision with the five Republican justices on the winning side, the Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional for Congress to pass or the president to sign into law any restrictions on the "right" of a corporation to pour money into political campaigns, so long as the money isn't directly given to the politicians, their campaigns or their parties.
Remember, the Justices shaped their arguments around corporate campaign donations because super PACs hadn't yet taken over as the primary means by which billionaires could control the political process.
The majority decision, written by Justice Kennedy, was quite explicit in saying that the government has no right to limit corporate power or corporate "free speech." Kennedy began this line of reasoning by positing, "Premised on mistrust of governmental power, the First Amendment stands against attempts to disfavor certain subjects or viewpoints."
It sounds reasonable. He even noted, sounding almost like something from a Martin Luther King Jr or JFK speech, that:
"By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others, the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker's voice. The Government may not by these means deprive the public of the right and privilege to determine for itself what speech and speakers are worthy of consideration."
But who is that "disadvantaged person or class" of whom Kennedy was speaking? He lays it out bluntly (the parts in single quotation marks are where he is quoting from previous Supreme Court decisions): "The Court has recognized that First Amendment protection extends to corporations....Under that rationale of these precedents, political speech does not lose First Amendment protection 'simply because its source is a corporation.'"
In his very eloquent and pointed dissent, Stevens even waxed philosophical, asking a series of questions for which there couldn't possibly be any clear or obvious answers given the Roberts court's decision:
"It is an interesting question 'who' is even speaking when a business corporation places an advertisement that endorses or attacks a particular candidate. Presumably it is not the customers or employees, who typically have no say in such matters. It cannot realistically be said to be the shareholders, who tend to be far removed from the day-to-day decisions of the firm and whose political preferences may be opaque to management. Perhaps the officers or directors of the corporation have the best claim to be the ones speaking, except their fiduciary duties generally prohibit them from using corporate funds for personal ends. Some individuals associated with the corporation must make the decision to place the ad, but the idea that these individuals are thereby fostering their self-expression or cultivating their critical faculties is fanciful."
In other words, Justice Stevens worried about the rich and powerful individuals who could direct a corporation to support a particular idea or candidate. And now we know that the "who" Justice Stevens was curious about turned out to be billionaires and the super PACs they use to buy each candidate.
And, thanks to that Citizens United decision, and the super PACs and billionaires that came along with the ruling, the basic principle that a campaign ends when it runs out of money no longer applies.
Let's be real: Ben Carson and probably Jeb Bush know they will never be president, but as long as they've got a billionaire and a super PAC, they can just keep on campaigning. Unfortunately for Republicans and the rest of us who are sick of listening to Donald Trump, Justice Stevens could not have guessed that a foul-mouthed, fascist billionaire would take the party by storm any more than Reince Pribus could have when he said his new primary rules marked "a historic day" for his party.
If only they knew then what we know now.
Solution: Get a Little Liberal
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