Foster Friess, unfortunately likable gajillionaire Santorum donor
When I checked the corporatocracy meter this morning, it was damn near red. It turns out that the Rick Santorum victories in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri that came out of nowhere Tuesday night actually came from Foster Friess, a Tea Party supporter and mutual fund investor. Props to Mose for the link. When the Santorum campaign could not afford to purchase advertising, Friess’s donation to the Red, White and Blue Super PAC paid for a monster radio and television blitz in Minnesota. On Monday, meanwhile, President Obama announced that he would begin accepting the aid of super PACs, apparently reversing his position on entities he called a threat to our democracy. For a while there, it looked like the whole corporatocracy meter/valve/pump assembly was going to blow, but then the House banned insider trading by members of Congress. So we’re back to just running at maximum pressure.
If you accept the narrative that Tuesday’s wins revitalized the Santorum campaign, then at this point his candidacy is entirely attributable to the existence of super PACs. The Santorum campaign was broke before Friess and another wealthy backer interceded on his behalf. The value of that intercession is difficult to overstate.
The Red, White and Blue Super PAC didn’t just buy pro-Santorum ads in Minnesota; they also ran a phone bank in Denver to send pro-Santorum voters to the polls. This sort of activity gives the lie to the claim that super PACs are in any way separate from the campaigns they support. Short of having actual Rick Santorum in front of the white board down at the office, there isn’t much more RWB Super P could do to coordinate with Rick Santorum for President. Phone banks aren’t advertising; they’re campaigning. When one organization has no money to pursue its mission and another spends vast sums to do same, they are the same organization.
So wealthy donors can give unlimited money to political campaigns, no matter what we call them, and the 2012 contest has become—here I quote the Times—a “battle among a few dozen wealthy Republicans to influence their party’s choice of a presidential nominee.” The other side has already chosen its nominee, of course. That Barack Obama has decided that he also needs super PAC funding—despite his prior opposition to same—says one of two things, depending on how cynical you are.
The less cynical explanation is that the Republican Party currently enjoys a massive fundraising advantage for the general. According to last month’s financial disclosures, Republican super PACs raised $91 million last year, both for individual candidates and for the party in general. Democrats, meanwhile, brought in a paltry $19 million. That fourfold disadvantage explains why Obama would tell his lieutenants to encourage super PAC donations, but it doesn’t explain why he would decide to take super PAC money.
In fact, it’s a reason for him to stick to his pledge. Twenty million is no small amount, but its size relative to the Republican PAC chest diminishes the tactical advantage the President gains from reneging on his promise. Why sacrifice your principles to take a kind of money that your opponent is going to get way, way more of anyway? The ethical advantage of refusal is constant no matter how much money we’re talking about, whereas the funding advantage of compromise scales with the other side. In this light, Obama’s decision to take super PAC money may be one of convenience—less about the cash advantage than about his intention to do that all along.
That is the more cynical explanation. Cynicism took it on the chin yesterday, though, when the House of Representatives voted to make so-called insider trading by members of Congress illegal. The House version of the bill differs from that passed by the Senate in its refusal to regulate gatherers of so-called “political intelligence”—members of the finance community who try to pump congresspeople for information that might affect stock prices. But we are still looking at a victory for basic decency, and it’s a useful reminder.
Knowing that at least one and probably three candidates for the presidency owe their existence to unlimited rich-guy largesse can create the impression that contemporary politics is a corporate monolith. It isn’t. Super PACs are gross because they make money and coordination even more powerful than they were, but they still are not the only powers out there. Better still, they are fighting not just us but also one another. The forces for unlimited cash influence are self-interested and therefore fractious. The forces for some sort of ethics may have disparate goals, but we are not pushing our agenda for the sole purpose of more effectively killing one another. As the meter twitches toward red, that is one reason to think we can eventually dissipate this heat as steam.
I think Obama’s been pretty consistent and rational on this subject. To use a football metaphor, a coach could argue that the rule that places pass interference penalties at the spot of the foul is bad for the game (country.) But on Sunday, no coach, however vehemently they hate the rule, will protest an interference penalty called on the other team by saying “Nah, we just want 15 yards for that penalty… no need to spot the ball at the 1 yard line.”
Once the rules are set, you have to play by them to the best of your ability. And that dude knows how to raise funds for an election! (see his contributions in ’08…)
PolitiFact examined Obama’s stance on Super PACs and rates it a full flop.
“We don’t take a position on the merits of a flip. We’re just interested in whether a person’s position has changed. In this case, Obama and his campaign have gone from refusing to fundraise for super PACs to declaring that senior officials will attend and speak at Priorities USA fundraising events. We respect that the president himself won’t participate, and that he still plans to fight the role of special interest money in campaigns, but that’s a major reversal of position, and we rate it a Full Flop.”
The football analogy is a pretty accurate illustration of the nature of this so-called flop, I would say.