Super PACs

Conservatives applauded the Citizens United ruling. But now GOP candidates are feeling the heat.

Editorial

January 14, 2012- When the Supreme Court handed down its 2010 decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, reaction tended to break along familiar lines: Conservatives saw it as an affirmation of free speech, while liberals warned of the effects of lifting restrictions on corporate contributions to campaigns. (The political reaction mirrored the court's own split, which was 5 to 4, with the more liberal justices dissenting.)

If contributions are a form of speech, conservatives reasoned, then the Constitution can't permit restrictions on speech by corporations — or unions, for that matter — any more than it can on individuals. Liberal critics, meanwhile, rejected the idea that corporations had the same free-speech rights as individuals and bewailed the rush of spending that the ruling would permit.

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-By Sam Stein

January 5, 2012- TILTON, N.H. — The rapid rise and far-reaching impact of super PACs — the well-financed non-party groups that helped carry former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to victory in the Iowa caucuses — have persuaded some prominent Republicans that restrictions of some sort on the groups' activities may be in order.

In an interview with The Huffington Post on Wednesday evening, former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge said he saw no legal way in which to limit the amount of money that these groups could spend or raise. But he said that both he and the candidate he supports, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, believed firmly that the names of the donors funding those groups should be subject to near instantaneous disclosure.

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They can spend unlimited amounts of money. They don't disclose donors until after the votes are counted. They deluged Iowa with millions of dollars of harsh negative ads.

-By Steven Rosenfeld

January 4, 2012- The real winner of the 2012 Iowa Caucuses may not be any of the Republican candidates, but a new political animal that is ugly, loud, anti-democratic and coming to your state in the upcoming primaries and caucuses: the super PAC.

These creatures—unleashed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling allowing direct corporate funding for “electioneering ads”—are satellite political campaigns that supposedly act independently of the candidates.

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