A new NY Times poll was just released that targets the insane amounts of money being funneled into politics ever since the Roberts Court decided corporations were people and the results are staggering. I expected there to be a decided break between Republicans and Democrats since Republicans fought for years to overturn every aspect of campaign finance laws, but that was not the case. The sight of so many monstrous Super PACS have even turned off the hardcore faithful and the stats aren't even close.
Americans of both parties fundamentally reject the regime of untrammeled money in elections made possible by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling and other court decisions and now favor a sweeping overhaul of how political campaigns are financed, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll.
The findings reveal deep support among Republicans and Democrats alike for new measures to restrict the influence of wealthy givers, including limiting the amount of money that can be spent by “super PACs” and forcing more public disclosure on organizations now permitted to intervene in elections without disclosing the names of their donors.
And by a significant margin, they reject the argument that underpins close to four decades of Supreme Court jurisprudence on campaign finance: that political money is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment. Even self-identified Republicans are evenly split on the question.
After only a few years, the effect of the hegemony of the rich over the political world has sent shudders down the backs of the entire American population.
The broader public appears to see things differently: More than four in five Americans say money plays too great a role in political campaigns, the poll found, while two-thirds say that the wealthy have more of a chance to influence the elections process than other Americans.
Those concerns — and the divide between Washington elites and the rest of the country — extend to Republicans.
Three-quarters of self-identified Republicans support requiring more disclosure by outside spending organizations, for example, but Republican leaders in Congress have blocked legislation to require more disclosure by political nonprofit groups, which do not reveal the names of their donors.
Republicans in the poll were almost as likely as Democrats to favor further restrictions on campaign donations, even as some prominent Republicans call for legislation to eliminate existing caps on contributions.
