Cui Bono?
by digby
Here’s a great piece by Ari Berman about the % who are buying our current election. This strikes me as particularly important:
The Wesleyan Media Project recently reported a 1600% increase in interest-group-sponsored TV ads in this cycle as compared to the 2008 primaries. Florida has proven the battle royal of the super PACs thus far. There, the pro-Romney super PAC, Restore Our Future, outspent the pro-Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our Future, five to one. In the last week of the campaign alone, Romney and his allies ran 13,000 TV ads in Florida, compared to only 200 for Gingrich. Ninety-two percent of the ads were negative in nature, with two-thirds attacking Gingrich, who, ironically enough, had been a fervent advocate of the Citizens United decision.
With the exception of Ron Paul’s underdog candidacy and Rick Santorum’s upset victory in Iowa — where he spent almost no money but visited all of the state’s 99 counties — the Republican candidates and their allied super PACs have all but abandoned retail campaigning and grassroots politicking. They have chosen instead to spend their war chests on TV.
This is part of a devil’s bargain between politics and media, isn’t it? All this money is going directly into the pockets of the television industry — which has every incentive to keep the gravy train going.
Maybe you can’t attack the money equals speech argument. But what about the costs? Isn’t there some kind of campaign reform that could specifically and narrowly target the pricing structure of political television ads? The status quo amounts to a form of political collusion between the wealthy magnates who are trying to buy our elections and the media corporations who stand to benefit from their contributions.
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