Citizen's United II - the other foot

[kandrathe]

This makes sense, for something which we should be *ethically* forbidden from doing, even if it's within the rules of the particular game. It's against the "rules of life," don't be cruel to animals! But third-party advertising is not inherently unethical. The political contest would serve everyone better without it, but nothing in particular is gained by having only one side stop.

(To be clear, that's not even what the original post actually refers to. This is just Republicans throwing a snit fit and taking their ball and going home. The Dems aren't doing anything, not even through proxies. I'm with Atrios - this would hurt Hillary more than help, in any case.)

-Jester

I think if it were limited to, "Our candidate is great, rah rah" it would be one thing. But, it's quite another to use unlimited 3rd party funds to swift boat your opponent, shifting smears and libels until the election.

My only hesitation is due to free speech concerns.

{Slightly off topic ramble}
You are right about Hillary. She's to the right of Obama, who ended up out Bushing Bush when it comes to drones, and extrajudicial, unilateral asymmetric war crimes. I sense she's more militant with less of conscience than he has.

To be fair, once the position of world emperor was carved out, it is hard to cram that genie back into its bottle -- to surrender the vague and loose interpretations of "for the public good", "authorization for war", and "war on terror". It is natural for the ever growing monstrosity of a federal bureaucracy to become the heartless, spineless, and brainless beast who destroys at the whims of its incompetent puppet masters. The strings are their for the plucking, and whomever finds themselves in control will be harried into action.

Anyway, I can't imagine her getting that seat, unless the Republicans find yet another feckless, brainless, boorish, misanthrope who halfheartedly panders to the political winds (yeah, I'm thinking of Chris Christie). I think their best bet is Marco Rubio who maybe hasn't totally demolished his cred with the Hispanic vote. Polls show about a 5 point lead for Hillary, but she's been mostly out of the spotlight.

Or, if the Libertarians field a solid 3rd candidate splitting off some of the Republicans and some of the independents -- ie. Rand Paul. My issues with Rand Paul are that sometimes he leads with what is ideologically sound, but a realistically impractical idea. Ideally, we can figure out how to privatize retirement, but realistically it has issues that need a detailed and nuanced response.

{Slightly off off topic ramble}
But, that is much like what Obama has done with say, the coal industry. By 2016, our coal industry (which was 50% of our electric generation) will be out about 1/4 million highly paid union jobs. Not many people understand or hate coal as much as I do, but even so, I would have pressed for a reasonable, painless transition out of coal. As it stands, we'll damage the economy, and drive up the price of electricity -- all in order to score political points.