- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
Republicans have waged a decades-long battle to blow up the campaign-finance laws that rein in big-money spending. Now, they are making a play that could end in their biggest victory since the Citizens United ruling in 2010.
The GOP is growing increasingly optimistic about their prospects in a little-noticed lawsuit that would allow official party committees and candidates to coordinate freely by removing current spending restrictions. If successful, it would represent a seismic shift in how tens of millions of campaign dollars are spent and upend a well-established political ecosystem for TV advertising.
An eventual victory in the lawsuit, filed last November by the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, would eliminate the need for House and Senate campaign committees of any party to set up separate operations to make so-called independent expenditures to boost candidates with TV ads.
OK, but:
Even my Boomer parents are going streaming-only now; political consultants still love TV ads because they make lots of money off of them, and the need to spend lots of money on TV also powers the small-dollar fundraising / “can you rush me $17 RIGHT NOW” machine from which all sorts of awful people likewise take a generous cut, but how much of an impact is this actually likely to have?
The article note that actual voters probably won’t see much of a difference. The main effect is an even more direct big donor to candidate money pipeline that will mean they’ll have even more influence than they already do.
Plus precedent of course, I imagine it’s usually easier to chip away at campaign finance regulations when you can cite other cases as evidence, but I’m no lawyer.
Sure, but isn’t big donor influence largely due to how much their money can swing elections? If TV ads fade in importance and you can saturate your audience with cheaper targeted internet ones, rich guys are reduced to regular old bribery and you can only go on so many junkets a year.
That’s probably a trend but according to this (sorry dumb paywalled stats site but the relevant bit is in the free overview) as of now Broadcast TV is still the largest political ad market.
That’s actually kind of my point - they’re spending the money on something that gets less effective every year, and it’s not clear if there’s any other expense that’ll replace it. And most politicians hate fundraising, so if they can mount an equally effective campaign with less money I expect an awful lot of them will do so.