Supremes Have Assured the Growth of America's Largest Political Party

The Supreme Court's ruling frees American business from the yoke of second-class citizenship. The reason American business is active in politics in the first place is to influence public policies that impact the prosperity of its employees and shareholders. Since unions invest their profits in stocks and bonds, they will be able to influence the corporations they support.

The ruling covers the money corporations and unions may spend from their own profits on independent ads and other advocacy efforts on behalf of candidates or issues. It does not change restrictions on direct contributions to candidates for federal office, which remain prohibited under federal law. The Citizens United decision does not allow corporations to dump unprecedented amounts of money directly into candidates' campaign coffers. The decision essentially means that if a corporation or union wanted to spend millions of dollars of its own money on its own issues ads in support of a candidate, it may do so. The ruling does not change spending rules covering the thousands of political action committees by corporations and special interest groups. Republican consultants, in particular, argued that the decision would simply shift spending by political action committees and issue-based "front groups" to the corporations themselves. "I don't believe that the ruling will fundamentally change the outcome of the elections given the obscene amounts of money that was spent independently in the last two years by everyone," said Jim Innocenzi, a GOP strategist in Alexandria, Va. "You could argue that since everyone has figured out a way to get around the rules, we'd be better off with full disclosures of who is really paying for this stuff and let everyone just promote whatever cause they want." Previously, federal law prohibited corporations and unions from using their treasuries to advocate for a specific candidate, allowing them to express themselves only through political action committees that were tightly regulated. They will still be prevented from donating money directly to campaigns even after the court's decision.


Campaign-finance reform was supposed to curb the influence of big interests in defense of the little guy. But somehow, big business and other special interests still seem to have Congress's ear. The bigger impact of Thursday's ruling may be to help moderate candidates at the expense of more partisan ones. When contributions are limited as they are now, big money can't flow as easily to the middle. Partisans on either side have a better chance to compete. Now that the Supreme Court has acted, look for more money to move to the middle. We will start to see, hopefully, a centrist move in politics, electing moderates, throwing out radicals from both ends of the political sphere. After all, the biggest political party now is not the democrats, it's the independents.... and they're growing.
THANK YOU SUPREMES!