I haven't used the word "sophistry" in a while, and this minor literary classic from WaPo blogger and Marco Rubio fanboy Chris Cillizza seems like a prime excuse to dust it off.
The esteemed Mr. Cillizza makes a very weak case here and does some Yogi Kudu level bending and stretching to argue that folks don't care, even so much as admitting right at the start that vast majorities of the American electorate say "money has too much influence in politics":
When asked whether there is too much money in politics, more than 8 in 10 respondents said yes. This reflects a broad consensus in the United States that the idea of billions being spent on our presidential races -- including tens of millions by wealthy individuals -- is unappealing and, at some level, regarded as wrong.
He also admits this cuts across party lines:
84 percent of people -- 80 percent of Republicans and 90 percent of Democrats -- believe money has too much influence in American politics.
That's not chump change, that's more than a supermajority of the American public. But that doesn't concern Cillizza:
Think back to the last two midterm election in 2010 and 2014. In each, Democrats -- from the White House on down -- insisted that Republicans' reliance on big money donors would be punished by the voting public. Harry Reid went to the Senate floor time and time again during the summer and fall of 2014 to blast the Koch brothers for their alleged attempts to buy the vote.
You'll remember what happened in both of those elections: BIG Republican victories. Those across-the-board GOP wins didn't come solely from the Democrats' focus on campaign finance issues, obviously, but it's also obvious that attempts to make the 2010 and 2014 elections referenda on big (Republican) money in politics just didn't work.
(More after the fold)
The fact that Harry Reid blasted the Koch brothers on the floor of the Senate in 2014 and the Democrats lost control of the Senate later that year seems like a facile, fallacious argument: post hoc, meet ergo propter hoc. Other, much more plausible explanations exist for the results of last year's elections. This makes about as much sense as the theory that the New York Mets are responsible for all that's wrong in the USA since 1962, from the suicide of Marilyn Monroe to the JFK assassination to Vietnam, Watergate, the Iran-Contra scandal and 9/11. You can give chapter and verse on it - bad things seem to happen when the Mets succeed - but believing the Mets starting play in the National League in 1962 led to the suicide of Marilyn Monroe and the JFK assassination takes a whole hell of a lot of credulity, just as believing Harry Reid denouncing the Koch Brothers led to a GOP Senate in 2014. [Note: Mets fans, no offense intended.]
Besides, so what if most voters really don't rank it as a priority? Go back 15 years to the 2000 presidential election, and forget for a minute about the whole sorry aftermath. Want to guess where national security ranked among voter priorities before the election? Terrorism wasn't a blip on the radar. Whatever you think of the response, terrorism became a part of the national conversation in a very quick, bloody and ugly way only a few short months after the election was finally resolved.
There's still a bigger issue with the balderdash that flows from Cillizza's word processor. Democracy is, in the final analysis, an act of faith: I vote for Senator Smith over Congressman Jones, and hire her to do a job. Senator Smith then goes to work for the public good, and strives to make life better for her constituents and for the country at large. When Senator Smith pays more attention to who gave what to her campaigns or her charitable foundations, faith in the system suffers. When people lose faith in the system, the system suffers. "That shining city on a hill" a certain former President liked to talk about loses more than a little of its shine. More than that, the people suffer. It invites corruption, like a backed up sewer invites cholera. Quality of life suffers, general well-being suffers, people suffer. That analysis isn't Republican, Democratic, conservative, liberal, or other. It's not pie in the sky, either. We ignore the issue of public corruption at our own peril.
So thanks, Chris Cillizza, you of the newspaper of record in the Nation's Capital. This was truly a work of staggering verbal and quasi-logical gymnastics. At least you took a break from fawning over Marco Rubio, and you got me to use a word I haven't used in a while, and for that I'm grateful.