Billionaires Going Rogue - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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political party democracy wealth elite influence
shared by Javier E on 29 Oct 12
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The virtually unanimous view throughout the course of four decades of revised regulation was that the Republican Party and its candidates would be the major beneficiaries, and, so far, that has been true.
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in 2010 — in the aftermath of deregulation — the balance skewed decisively to the right. In the current 2011-12 election cycle, it shifted overwhelmingly to the right:
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The movement rightwards of almost half a billion dollars in this cycle alone — signified by the red bar on the graph representing Republican donations — is not, however, the pure gold that analysts on both sides expected.
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the Republican Party and the conservative establishment is institutionally stronger than the Democratic Party, with an infrastructure that served as a bulwark through the 1960s and 70s
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The right wing of the Republican Party has more disruptive potential than the left wing of the Democratic Party because it is more willing to go to extremes:
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While, the rapid growth of well-financed and autonomous competitors threatens all existing power structures, the bulk of the costs are likely to fall on the Republican Party.
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The most powerful weapon of all was always the oversight exercised by party leaders over the flow of money to candidates
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The Republican establishment has a full arsenal of weapons at its disposal, including endorsements, favored speaking engagements at key party gatherings, leverage over top consultants and a signaling process to show who has been anointed from on high.
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Republicans, in contrast to Democrats, prefer hierarchical, well-ordered organizations, and are much more willing to cede authority to those in power.
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Unleashed by Citizens United, a handful of renegade billionaires made life miserable for Mitt Romney, the establishment candidate. More importantly, it only took four men — Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas and Macao casino mogul; Harold Simmons, a Dallas-based leveraged buyout specialist; Foster Friess, a conservative Christian and a successful investor; and William Dore, a Louisiana energy company C.E.O. – to stun traditional party power brokers during the first four months of 2012.
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turned the primary process into an open contest, giving full voice to the more extreme wings dominated by the Tea Party and the evangelical right.
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The newly empowered billionaires are positioned to challenge the Republican Party at its point of greatest vulnerability, during the primaries.
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These new players, along with their super PACs, undermine the influence of the parties in another crucial way. Before Citizens United, the three major Republican Party committees exerted power because their financial preeminence gave them the final word on the award of contracts to pollsters, direct mail, voter contact, and media consultants – very few of whom were willing to alienate a key source of cash.
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The ascendance of super PACs creates a separate and totally independent source of contracts for the community of political professionals. Super PACs and other independent groups already raise more than any of the political party committees and almost as much as either the Republican or Democratic Party committees raise in toto.
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“Who is the Republican Party in the Citizens United age? If you had to point to the ‘Republican Party’ would you be more likely to point to Reince Preibus (and implicitly the R.N.C.) or Karl Rove (and Crossroads G.P.S.)? I think candidates might consider Rove more important.”
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the diminishment of the parties means that the institutions with the single-minded goal of winning a majority will be weakened. When parties are influential, they can help keep some candidates and office holders from going off the ideological deep end. The emergence of independently financed super PACs give voice to those with the most extreme views.
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If the parties are eviscerated, the political system could adjust itself and regain vitality. But I doubt it. For all their flaws, strong political parties are important to a healthy political system. The displacement of the parties by super rich men determined to flex their financial muscles is another giant step away from democracy.