It's increasingly all about the big money people
by David Atkins
E.J. Dionne has a great column detailing what's really going on inside Republican circles:
The language commonly used to describe the battle going on inside the Republican Party is wrong and misleading. The fights this spring are not between “the grass roots” and “the establishment” but between two establishment factions spending vast sums to gain the upper hand.
Their confrontation has little to do with the long-term philosophical direction of the GOP. Very rich ideological donors, along with tea party groups, have been moving the party steadily rightward. Political correctness of an extremely conservative kind now rules.
This explains the indigestion some Republican politicians are experiencing as they are forced to eat old words acknowledging a human role in climate change. It’s why party leaders keep repeating the word “Benghazi” as a quasi-religious incantation, why deal-making with President Obama is verboten and why they stick with their “repeal Obamacare” fixation.
Dionne goes into how the recent Republican primary in Nebraska was a reflection of this big donor on big donor dynamic, and closes:
Thanks to Supreme Court decisions opening the way for unlimited and often anonymous campaign contributions, we are entering a time when “follow the money” is the proper rubric for understanding the internal dynamics of the Republican Party. Washington-based groups tied to various conservative interests and donors will throw their weight around all over the country, always claiming to speak for those “grass roots.” Primary voters will be left with a choice between two establishments that, in the end, differ little on what they would do with power.
This trend toward warring money factions isn't just present on the Republican side. There's quite a bit of it on the Dem side as well.
To be sure, not all big money donors want bad things. Tom Steyer is spending nine figures to get politicians to take climate change seriously. George Soros wants more Keynesian policies.
But the problem is that a world in which it's all billionaires fighting each other is a world in which only a few voices are heard, self-interest usually runs rampant (most of these guys didn't get rich by being generous), and the scope of acceptable public policy is extremely narrow and rarely ever hits the ultra-rich in their pocketbooks.
Rampant inequality is one thing. Allowing the plutocrats created by rampant inequality to spend unlimited amounts of money in elections is another. Together, they constitute a death sentence for American democracy.
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