On Tuesday morning, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling that further loosened the restrictions on campaign contributions. In McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, the court decided 5-4 to abolish aggregate contribution limits when it comes to political campaigns. While contribution limits are still in place for individual candidates and election committees, this ruling swings the door wide open for wealthy individuals to spread as much money around to as many candidates and campaign committees as they want.
After the ruling was announced, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus went on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports to discuss his feelings on the decision. Considering that the RNC was the main player in this case, it wasn’t as if anyone thought he would be disappointed with the ruling. Still, Priebus’ remarks to Mitchell on Tuesday were pretty startling, as he tried to claim that this isn’t going to lead to million-dollar checks coming the GOP’s way, while eventually arguing that there should be more money in politics, not less.
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As you can see from the interview with Mitchell, Priebus essentially wants no limits on money whatsoever. While his initial defense for this decision is that it won’t lead to more money coming the GOP’s way and that this was only about defending the First Amendment, he eventually dropped any pretense about constitutional rights by the end of the interview.
After making his claim that this was only about allowing donors to support more candidates fairly and allow for more transparency, Priebus momentarily argued himself into a corner by bringing up outside groups. Basically, he seemed to be criticizing the Citizens United ruling that treats corporations as people and gives them the right to donate unlimited amount of funds to political action committees.
Of course, Priebus realized his error, since he is very much in favor of Citizens United. When Mitchell tried to get him to continue down the path he started regarding billionaire-funded SuperPACs, Priebus eventually revealed that he is in complete favor of the Citizens United ruling and also stated that there shouldn’t be any contribution limits at all in politics. His argument, in the end, was that candidates and committees should be able to get as much money as possible and be able to coordinate with corporations and other outside groups to fully fund election campaigns.
What this interview really highlighted is that the Republican Party is only about one thing — money. As Priebus stated in this interview, they do not want any laws or rules restricting access to campaign funds. Essentially, it should just be a massive free-for-all. Priebus even stated in the interview that the current campaign-finance laws are just too ‘complicated.’ The best thing to do, in his opinion, is scrap it all and just let candidates accept any and all funds, no matter how much. Because, you know, that’s what the First Amendment’s all about.
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