The horrifying thing for McConnell about the nickname Moscow Mitch, is that it underscores how Money is different from free speech — a key idea for Mitch McConnell. The nickname lays bear how wrong he is about equating these two things.
Let’s imagine for a second, a world where McConnell is principled, and truly believes that rich people spending money is their way of exercising free speech — after all, a rich person hires other people to do things for them all the time, why not speak for them, too?
In this sense, money could be a kind of transferred speech, it might be speech abstracted — but typical speech is direct — you can see the lips move. You can see the words on the page. It is not difficult to attribute speech, to know its source or likely source.
Speech is public, money is private. It is very easy for someone else’s money, especially foreign, Russian money, to worm its way into US Politics. And worm its way it does, through the NRA, to Giuliani, through his “drug dealer associates”.
Money can be hidden — Speech? Hidden speech is speech that is not said. It’s the look on McConnell’s face when he hears “Moscow Mitch”.
Words do not involve a quid pro quo. They don’t require someone to agree to what someone else has said to hear them. This may also be Trump’s confusion in condemning himself by trying to pretend that the quid pro quo communicated by his words could somehow not be what he meant.
But Money does involve a quid pro quo, as does withholding it for favors. People don’t accept money from foreigners without knowing that they owe them something in return.
So keep asking Republicans about whether Citizen’s United was correctly decided. And keep referring to McConnell as Moscow Mitch.