Supreme Court Campaign Finance Decision

The Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that it is unconstitutional to limit the spending of corporations and unions for political advertising and overturns the unconstitutional McCain-Feingold ban on political advertising from these entities 30 days before a general primary and 60 days before a general election. Not only were corporations and unions limited, but so were organizations like the ACLU and the NRA. Conservatives and Libertarians have praised this decision as being true to the 1st Amendment, while liberals fear that corporations will hold undue power over the public (and thus the political process) and that the court is returning to the Lochner era of the Supreme Court (1897-1937), in which Supreme Court decisions were frequently pro-free enterprise.

I don't believe corporations will hold undue power, and if their arguments are sound, then by all means the public should listen to them and heed their words. The left seems to think that the people are sheeple who will be mesmerized by corporate arguments which will surely be malicious and untrue. Another assumption they make is that the Democratic Party will be harmed more than the Republican Party. This might be true, but don't forget that there are plenty of businesses out there that support and give money to Democrats as well as Republicans. Socialists are left out in the cold, but they have always been left out in the cold by American politics and rightly so.

What this decision does is limits control of political speech. The provisions of McCain-Feingold extended beyond a mere time regulation as the intention was clearly to curb a certain kind of speech. Time regulations on speech are perfectly constitutional if there is no discrimination on the basis of content. Just like technically voting rights for the public can be revoked as long as it is done without prejudice, but this won't happen. Anyway, this limiting of control most certainly does damage to incumbents, and it should. After all, it should satisfy the bipartisan crowd of people who complain about over 90% reelection rates (which ignores the fact that many incumbents smartly choose to retire rather than making a risky or unsuccessful reelection bid). It certainly satisfies me as reelection rates should be even lower given the piss poor performance of Congress.

Overall, while I doubt this decision will have as strong of an impact as its enemies believe it will, I hope it does.