The Citizens United decision by SCOTUS was celebrated by Republicans because it opened the flood gates to more money in politics. They envisaged record amounts of money being spent on their elections and this indeed happened as we saw in the 2014 Midterms. Little did they realize how it could also adversely impact them. They are finding out, however, and they are not happy about it.
The first obvious deleterious effect occurred in the House and has leveraged a major split in Republican ranks. Most see this as a factional split between the establishment and the tea party but, like the melting polar icebergs, there is a lot more going on beneath the surface.
Traditionally, the Speaker's position embraces a number of duties, responsibilities and abilities. These include assigning committee positions and a proven ability to raise enormous amounts of money for the party. The latter has helped to keep Boehner in the premier position because he is the undisputed leader when it comes to fundraising. The Speaker was also the conduit through which corporate and special interest monies flowed to House majority members at election time and it was the Speaker who doled out that money as he saw fit. The dual authority over election funds and who gets what position on which committee has long been a very great and binding power over fellow members.
That is how it used to be. That is how the Speaker was able to control their own conference and it was very effective — while it lasted.
Now that power has been significantly diluted in proportion to the amount of money that is flowing directly to members; in other words, money that is bypassing the Speaker. The most notable culprit behind the scenes is Heritage Action which funds the tea party faction. No longer are its members reliant on the Speaker's good graces for the bulk of their election funding. Instead they are obligated to the agenda of their principle benefactor — and that is no longer the Speaker.
Further complicating the backstage scenario is the fact that Heritage Action has been locked in a war with the Chamber of Commerce for dominance of the congressional Republican agenda. With Ted Cruz surreptitiously organizing the House tea partiers, Heritage Action has been able to bloody the nose of the Chamber of Commerce, which supports the establishment, on more than one occasion. Immigration Reform owes its collapse to this battle for domination – and it was Heritage Action which won that round.
It wasn't long before Heritage Action discovered that the best and easiest way to lure tea partiers to their side was to offer them funding independent of the Speaker's leadership PAC. This has also allowed them to split from the Republican Study Committee and form their own exclusive, invitation-only club: the House Freedom Caucus. The last calculation I saw of their membership total was pushing at the 50 mark. That was a month ago so it may have increased since then, especially if Heritage Action is promising more election funds to more defectors.
The dilemma this rechannelling of funds has caused is obvious in Boehner's inability to control the behavior and votes of the House tea partiers. No longer do they rely on his favor for funding nor do they care about committee appointments. The loss of these traditional powers has badly weakened the Speaker and further exposed the deepening factional rift.
The second more-money dilemma for Republicans involves the presidential race. Post their 2012 loss, the Republicans conducted an autopsy. As Huff Post's Jason Linkins noted:
One major area that the RNC examined was the length of the 2012 primary season itself, which to their mind had become a debate-happy horror show that ended up playing a role in imperiling their chances.
The first thing they did was to cut the number of debates from 16 to 9 and hold them closer to the primaries. They figured this would help weed out the also-runs quickly and reduce opportunities for the extreme crazy to taint the whole party. What they failed to factor in was the rise of the super PACs.
From Patrick O’Connor of The Wall Street Journal:
The race for the Republican presidential nomination is shaping up to be one of the most drawn-out in a generation.
The candidate field looks unusually crowded, with more than a dozen contenders appealing to different slices of the GOP. The rise of super PACs allows candidates to stay in the race longer than before. And nominating rules meant to compress the process may complicate a front-runner’s ability to amass the delegates necessary to win.
The result, some GOP strategists say, is that next year’s contest has the ingredients to be the longest since then-President Gerald Ford prevailed over Ronald Reagan at the 1976 convention.
The stand-out sentence is:
The rise of super PACs allows candidates to stay in the race longer than before. Hmm — that wasn't what Rince Preibus and the RNC had in mind when they set out to shorten their primary season!
Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster who advised Arizona Senator John McCain in both of his presidential bids, made this prediction:
This cycle, because of all these structural rules changes and the advent of super PACs, people are not going to drop out. Republicans have created a system where, because of super PACs, it is hard to project someone winning until late May or early June.
As Jason Linkins observed: "So, it's our wonderfully new and corrupt system of financing elections that's going to ruin it for everyone?"
Yes, but it's only going to ruin it for Republicans which, as you so aptly put it, is "deliciously ironic"!
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