The era of Citizens United has begun. The ugly decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that allows political campaign contributions to be unlimited and opaque will if left on the current path will go down as one of the more abominable decisions of the past 100 years. Although decided 4 years ago this is the first congressional cycle that is feeling its wrath.
Politics 101 teaches that high turnout favors Democratic candidates, lower turnout favors Republican candidates. Republican voters have more means to get to the polls, they are managers, business owners, people with more flexible work and transportation options. In contrast Democrats will be less informed and less flexible with work hours and means of transport. This is why the Republican party is always trying to limit or even suppress voters and the Democrats are always launching registration drives.
Campaigns turn negative when one candidate introduces that element and the other must respond. Money from PACs, industry groups and wealthy donors provide ample means to ignite negative advertising and free media in a close election and tip the balance to the GOP column. This is the situation Citizens United creates.
This year was one of the lowest voter turnouts in federal campaign history despite more money spent than any other midterm on record. Throw in a little dash of presidential 6 year itch and “voila” you get the results of the 2014 midterm elections.
But it’s not all yellow brick road for the Republicans. In 2008 when the GOP was finishing an 8 year reign in the White House that brought on 2 long foreign wars (one of which nobody knew why we were in) and the creation of the Great Recession the Republicans went into survival mode, circled the wagons and stuck together as a monolithic block refusing to work with the governing party on anything. It turned out to be a brilliant tactic by a desperate party. But now that they own Congress which has approval ratings that are less than half of the unpopular president’s and with Obama officially in lame duck status, survival mode is over and the Republicans are now a governing party.
Almost immediately the chinks in the armor are starting to show. The libertarian wing represented by Rand Paul, the insurgent tea party with Ted Cruz and the mainstream GOP of John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and John McCain are fighting behind the scenes as to the direction of the party. This will be personified on center stage right on time for the 2016 presidential election, an open seat free for all donnybrook that has been building over the past 7 years.
The big winner of 2014: Hillary Rodham Clinton