Big Business Makes A Bid To Buy Congress-- Who's To Blame?

Tens of millions of dollars from shady political action committees funded by Big Business with special interest agendas are flooding into the electoral system, thanks to the radical decision by the corporate-leaning Supreme Court, Citizens United. The Senate has proved itself unwilling to protect ordinary citizens from this dangerous assault on our democracy. In fact, it was the Senate that is responsible for confirming the dedicated corporate shills to the Supreme Court who were just waiting for this opportunity to shift the balance of power away from ordinary citizens and in the direction of Big Business. And not just the Republicans. Let me come back to that in a minute. First take a look at this report in the L.A. Times about the impact. Rove's shady operation alone, American Crossroads, has already raised $32 million to defeat Democrats in Congress. And American Crossroads isn't the only GOP front group taking advantage of the destruction of campaign finance laws by the runaway right-wing court. Americans For Prosperity, FreedomWorks, the Club for Growth, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Americans for Tax Reform are working towards the same ends, often in the same races. "The organizations have been created outside the official party apparatus. They duplicate almost all the functions of the traditional GOP while often taking advantage of legal provisions that allow them to conceal the names of those who foot the bill."

The new organizations appear to have stolen a march on the Democrats. Organized labor and other Democratic-leaning groups are only now running commercials with significant campaign-related messages. As of last week, more than twice as much had been spent on television ads favoring Republican candidates as had been spent on ads for Democrats ($36 million to $16 million), according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group.

American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS have already run millions of dollars in advertising in nine Senate races in California, Illinois, New Hampshire and other states. Washington state and Florida ad blitzes are likely to be announced soon.

Crossroads expects to move heavily into more than two dozen House races, including those in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and possibly California.

Some of the $31.6 million raised by Rove and his allies for the Crossroads groups also is going into a grassroots campaign network that promises unprecedented coordination with business and conservative groups, strategies to monitor new early voting rules and a new database that will allow precise targeting of likely conservative voters. It would then generate 20 million phone calls and 40 million pieces of mail to get them to vote.

Steven Law, a Bush administration and campaign veteran, runs the Crossroads groups. Former RNC Chairman Mike Duncan serves as Crossroads board chairman. In the same suite, Norm Coleman, the former Minnesota senator, runs American Action Network, which hopes to raise $25 million this year.

So far, the conservative groups have raised and spent more money than labor and the Democrats, even though the latter went into the campaign season with a clear financial advantage.

Democrats acknowledge that the independent conservative groups are making a difference. A memo circulating among House Democrats shows that as of Sept. 14, outside Republican groups had reserved air time for $22.4 million in advertising in key House races, compared with Democrat-aligned groups reserving just $3 million through mid-October for the same contests.

In Colorado, American Crossroads, the Club for Growth and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sponsored ads last week for Ken Buck, the Republican Senate candidate. Only one group, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, was on the air for Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet.

In Nevada, American Crossroads took credit for buoying Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle, with approximately $2 million in ads in her race against well-funded Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "Our ads helped keep the race competitive after the primary when Reid was going for an early knockout," Law said.

In California, where Sen. Barbara Boxer has enjoyed a fundraising advantage over Republican challenger Carly Fiorina, outside groups have helped Fiorina close the gap.

Boxer's campaign manager, Rose Kapolczynski, said the outside groups essentially provided "$3 million in free advertising for the Fiorina campaign" at a time when Fiorina didn't have the resources to go on the air herself.

The antiabortion Susan B. Anthony Fund plans to double the $3 million it spent nationally in 2008, including $1 million to defeat Boxer. Already Crossroads GPS has aired $1 million worth of advertising. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce plans to spend several million dollars against Boxer, and other conservative groups have made pledges as well.

"This is why this may last longer and be more competitive than Barbara Boxer's previous races," said political science professor Bruce Cain of UC Berkeley. "In the past, you could close out the opposition by building up a lead early on and then donors would stop giving."

Kapolczynski said the influx of outside money has had an upside in helping galvanize Boxer's supporters, particularly after ads aired sponsored by Crossroads GPS, with its known ties to Rove. "Karl Rove coming into California to campaign against Boxer was a wakeup call to a lot of our supporters," she said.

Perhaps the purest play on inserting a corporate hack onto the Court came in 2006 with the confirmation 58-42 of Sam Alito, as pure a creation of the corporatocrisy and as pure the candidate of Big Business as anyone ever nominated to the Court. He was a quintessential Bush pick. And, of course, every single Republican-- including now Democrat Arlen Specter-- voted for him. But so did 4 Democrats, Robert Byrd (WV), Kent Conrad (ND), Tim Johnson (SD) and, of course, Ben Nelson (NE). By then, though, the battle was already over when nineteen Democrats joined the GOP cloture vote to shut down debate, guaranteeing Alito a place on the Court. Cloture passed 72-25, the GOP and their Big Business allies being joined by Dan Akaka (HI), Max Baucus (MT), Jeff Bingaman (NM), Robert Byrd (WV), Maria Cantwell (WA), Tom Carper (DE), Ken Conrad (ND), Byron Dorgan (ND), Dan Inouye (HI), Tim Johnson (SD), Herb Kohl (WI), Mary Landrieu (LA), Joe Lieberman (CT), Blanche Lincoln (AR), Bill Nelson (FL), Ben Nelson (NE), Mark Pryor (AR), Jay Rockefeller (WV), and Ken Salazar (CO).

If there's one member of the Court as corporatist as Alito it would be Chief Justice John Roberts, perhaps the least qualified Supreme Court Chief Justice in history. 22 Democrats opposed his confirmation-- and 22 voted for confirmation. This time you can add half a dozen liberals, Chris Dodd, Russ Feingold, Patrick Leahy, Carl Levin, Patty Murray and Ron Wyden, to the list of those responsible for an extreme right Supreme Court eager to turn the country over to the corporations to run.