His column is occasioned by the arguments before the Supreme Court which could lift the limits on total contributions per federal cycle, so that the wealthy could give the max per candidate to as many candidates as they might like.
But this column in Thursday's New York Times covers much more than the factual issues in the case.
And is often the case with Blow, there are some telling remarks and observations.
As he notes
Rich conservatives are out to bend government to their will or break it in the attempt to discredit this Democratic president and ensure that there won’t be another soon.
At the same time as they seek to remove limits on how much they can spend, they want to limit the ability of those who might vote differently than them to vote at all.
Or as Blow puts it:
This is a sinister, last-gasp move of gangsterism: when you’re losing the game, tilt the table.
You must understand this larger plot to fully appreciate the Republicans’ current budget ploy. This is not so much about limiting government as it is about measuring power. Rich Republicans are reaching for the edges so that they can redefine the limits.
I have a few more thoughts and observations, and a bit more from Blow.
In many ways our the future of our country is balanced on a knife's edge right now.
We are seeing the government crippled even if we get a clean CR, by the Democrats having agreed to sequester levels of spending.
We could see the collapse of the world wide financial system, and while it might be nice to see those on Wall Street take a haircut, unfortunately a collapse in equity markets would be devastating for the retirement hopes of many - through the loss of value in defined benefit pension funds, in 401Ks and 403Bs, in individual portfolios.
Unlike some, Blow is not a blame both sides journalist, for he writes
This is not a “both sides at fault” issue. It is a tremendously partisan one.
And yet, and yet . . . . if the economy and/or the financial system collapse, if we default for the first time in history, Republicans and their allies will attempt to blame it on the President, even though they will have been the ones to have caused it to happen.
We now have Republicans either saying defaulting would not be such a big deal or that it would not happen, that Democrats are simply trying to scare people.
Perhaps we need to remember what Republicans do and do not believe. As Blow puts it
Some Republicans have never met an inconvenient fact that they weren’t determined to deny. Evolution: didn’t happen. Climate change: not so much. Obama’s faith: doubt it.
In some parts of the Republican universe, facts and fantasy merge, the truth doesn’t surface, it’s shaped, data must be made to conform to doxology, and accepted science borders on the heretical. This is how the money-rich are able to prey on the knowledge-poor.
note - the article has a link for Climate Change, but as I post this, that goes to the same page as the link for evolution
In his penultimate paragraph, Blow places this all in a larger context:
This is bigger than Obamacare. This is about rich conservatives seeking to exert unlimited influence on our political system, and employing far-right Republicans who are animated, to varying degrees, by an innate hostility to this president, fear of diminishing influence and a disavowal of disagreeable truths.
rich conservatives - Koch Brothers, for example
employing far-right Republicans - who function as useful (to the rich conservatives) idiots
and note this
disavowal of disagreeable truths - should not matter how disagreeable, but truth is truth, unless you refuse to believe science, and allow your racial hostility to blind you to anything that contradicts it.
There should be a special place in Hell for those who are willing to foment racism as a means of gaining and/or maintaining political and economic power
But there is an even more serious question, and it is with that that Blow ends his column:
This is about the fragility of our democracy: the possibility that a government by the people may swiftly give way to a government dominated by dark money and dark motives.
We have been on this path since Buckley v Valeo equated money and speech, and when combined with the idea that corporations are persons under the Constitution - a notion that should be an abomination to anyone who claims to be an originalist given the attitude of the Founders on so many related issues - Citizens United is really not all that surprising, as saddening as it is.
Perhaps the latest case will continue the path, although it realistically will not make that much of a difference to the obscenely wealthy who think our politics and government should be their personal sandboxes. Those listen to Rachel Maddow tonight will have found out about the Koch Brothers spending a quarter billion to fund the groups trying to crash the government as a means of stopping Obamacare.
Do not be surprised to find out that some of those pushing not funding the government and allowing the debt ceiling to become a contentious issue, one where default is at least a possibility, have taken positions in various markets that will give them great gain as people and organizations start to dump Treasuries (as did Fidelity today) and stocks begins to spiral (if not plummet) - downward.
We will need to rewrite the Preamble to make it accurate.
It will no longer be We the People
It will be We the Plutocrats
And the more the 200 year experiment in a liberal democracy will become a memory, replaced by something which maintains the fiction of the structures but which has a reality where the Golden Rule has been totally replace by a new mott0: He Who Has the Gold Rules
So why am I still teaching American Government and politics?
What will I be teaching next week, when October 17 is upon us?
What if we actually do default?
I feel no peace, none at all.