GOP salivates at the biggest campaign finance win since Citizens United
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.
The biggest issue here isn't even this campaign finance change.
The biggest issue is that once again Republicans push a decades-long battle.
Conservatives play the long game. They push their agenda for years and decades at a time until it starts to stick.
Liberals can't focus on one topic for more than a few weeks or months before they jump onto the next big travesty that they try (but usually fail) to solve. The Left has the attention plan of a goldfish.
There's a reason why RvW has been thrown out, gun laws are the loosest they've been in decades and campaign finance changes happen, while we still don't have universal healthcare, parental leave, mandatory minimum holidays, etc. One side can look at the big picture and plan their strategy over many, many years, while the other side is endlessly losing focus by jumping to some fake crisis after another and never accomplishing anything.
No, it's more that there are a diverse group of liberals all trying to get attention for whatever issue their pocket is trying to address. The conservatives only care about one issue: Being at the top of the hierarchy. This means they're all working toward similar, reinforcing goals.
It's not an attention span issue. It's a divergent needs issue.
Yeah, and which one gets things done? Maybe the Left should wake the fuck up and realize that focusing in on a handful of issues COLLECTIVELY will go a hell of a lot further than a million smaller issues focused in on by dozens of different sub-groups.
Conservatives get shit done by falling in-line and accepting that what is good for the larger group will help smaller conservative groups in the long run. A rising tide raises all ships.
The ones committing crimes and that cheats. The one that throws out centuries and decades old procedural traditions of our legislative body. The one trying to hurt as many people and burn the country down as fast as possible to get their agenda in so they can perform a coup.
I'm sorry Democrats aren't burning the country at both ends to succeed, but that's generally not what non-traitors do.
Play by the book, lose to the ones who burned it.
This is a very idealistic and naive view of politics in general. Politics is cutthroat. The entire political world plays by a completely different set of rules. Nobody cares how you get to the top. The whole point of the game is to get to the top through any means necessary, and then you can impose your will on others.
Think Game of Thrones, but without the dragons, hot women, and incest.
Democrats can say "Democrats aren’t burning the country at both ends to succeed, but that’s generally not what non-traitors do." all they want, but they often end up saying it while they're sitting on the sidelines. Sad but true in the world of politics: You can take the moral high ground, or you can win in the long run. Pick one.
EDIT: Downvotes don't change reality, people. To paraphrase another reply: You can play by the book, but you'll lose to the ones who burned it.
Hey now. There's probably some incest.
Maybe some light incest......
(I am US based and this is my US based argument - please do not EuroTroll me)
But herein lies the problem. "Progressive" often means new or novel. Conservative mostly means "preserve the status quo." (I'm over simplifying for the sake of making a point, I know).
Conservatives are willing to sit on the status quo and work against change as they can. Progressives want to right wrongs NOW and make effective changes for the future. Unfortunately, because our society grows and changes quickly, and what is right today can be wrong tomorrow and the target moves, so progressive goals also move. Meanwhile conservatives are still plugging away at keeping the status quo.
I'm trying to say that the nature of progressives is to change goals and make things better, which makes it harder to coalesce around one goal for 10, 20, 40+ years. When your target is the past, its easy to keep that in sight as you go forward.
Cool! Come join my team and let's get shit done. Here's my top 10.
1: federal ban on rent control and single family zoning. Ideally, end all zoning and let the market sort it out
2: free trade agreements with all non-sanctioned trade partners
3: immigration reform - you set foot on US soil and you're on a path to citizenship. End all deportations except for those on the path that also commit specified crimes
4: 0% corporate tax rate. Failing that, corporate taxes as low an international pressures allow
5: raise income taxes on the top 3 quintiles, and raise capital gains taxes, progressively. Increase property taxes substantially via adding a new federal property tax of X% of the unimproved value of the land.
6: federal ban on drug testing except in the case of injury or malpractice in the workplace, or as part of a parole/probation arrangement
7: federal mandate that states tie minimum wage to county cost of living, with biannual updates
8: public option for health care provided by an 18% increase in income taxes, in addition to the tax increases mentioned above. Include language that total employee compensation packages may not be altered as part of this policy. Employees pocket what employers are currently spending on healthcare.
9: Union reform. End right to work and legislate new laws that control how unions operate and when they are overstepping their bounds
10: criminal justice reform that builds upon the 13th amendment and forces penal work paid at minimum wage instead of prison time for all/nearly all non-violent offenses and some violent offenses
I'm going to bet you disagree with some or many of these, and that's why we don't have 1 lockstep party.
That's the difference between the two parties. We have fundamental disagreements, as democrats++, in how problems should be solved. Republicans fall in line behind "fuck democrats."
Will Rogers said it best, "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat."