Cheerleading the lying, cheating, and stealing by banks and politicians is a group of unelected enablers and king makers. Their dominance of our political machinery is making a mockery of representative democracy.
One of the biggest unelected enablers is Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, as well as hundreds of other media outlets worldwide. Murdoch makes no secret of his desire to own enough media outlets tyo control anything and everything in politics.
Next are the billionaire king makers who single-handedly promote their own agendas, candidates in political contests, and even choices for President of the United States. Perhaps best known are the Koch brothers, who shovel truckloads of cash to the campaigns of Tea-Party-backed conservative candidates nationwide.
In the 2012 Republican primary, there have emerged a number of other billionaire king makers, each of whom has their own candidate.
Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas Casino magnate, has Newt Gingrich. As of February 2012, Adelson has put $10,000,000 into a super PAC supporting Gingrich. Huntsman had his own billionaire father, and Foster Friess has Rick Santorum.
In all three cases, these billionaire enablers made it possible for the candidates to run or continue in the race, at least for a while. Without their money all three candidates would have been long gone from the primary race.
Rick Santorum’s unelected enabler, Friess, uses a super PAC called the “Red, White, and Blue Fund” to keep his candidate alive, running negative television ads that do not need to be approved by the anyone. He appears on stage with Rick after each Santorum primary victory.
According to the NY Times, a “battle” is raging among a few billionaires to be the chief enabler, the one who picks The Republican party’s next presidential candidate.[1] They can all use the super PAC device authorized by the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case to make unlimited bets on the candidate of their choice, reducing to insignificance the puny campaign contributions made by ordinary voters.
The biggest unelected enabler of all is Grover Norquist. It would be suicide to run in a Republican primary for any office in the land unless you sign the pledge to Norquist. 236 of the 242 Republicans in Congress in 2011 took the pledge.[2] The pledge requires you to promise never to vote to increase taxes or close corporate tax loopholes without an offsetting tax reduction. You must “oppose any net reduction of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.”[3]
Norquist has been called “a fiscal terrorist” by Ronald Reagan’s former budget director, David Stockman.[4] Tax breaks protected by the Norquist pledge now cost the government $1.2 trillion per year (more than defense, Medicare and Medicaid, and social security), and most of the benefit further enriches the already wealthy.[5]
Neera Tanden of the liberal Center for American Progress says: "That's what's amazing about Grover Norquist. It's not that he's created an anti-tax allergic reaction within the Republican Party. It's that he's been able to define anything that takes away tax subsidies for corporations as a tax increase." [6]
When a candidate for office signs the pledge of allegiance to the nation, no one complains. When a candidate pledges to vote his conscience or to do what is best for his constituents, no questions are asked. But when a candidate signs a pledge to follow the program of an unelected ideologue to avoid having that person order millions of dollars in contributions to be used against him, something has broken down in the system of representative government.[7]
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Thanks to the alert reader, a former employee of Congress, who sent me this informative and enjoyable board game:
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[1] Jim Rutenberg and Nichols Confessore, “A Wealthy Backer Likes the Odds on Santorum,” NY Times, Feb. 8, 2012.
[2] Tim Dickenson, “How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich,” Rolling Stone, Nov. 24, 2011.
[3] http://www.atr.org/taxpayer-protection-pledge. Brian Rosenberg, a Star Tribune reporter, argues that the pledge undermines democracy and that Norquist is more powerful than any elected politician: http://www.startribune.com/opinion/otherviews/125245319.html.
[4] Tim Dickenson, “Grover Norquist: The Billionaire’s Best Friend,” Rolling Stone, Nov. 24, 2011.
[5] Tim Dickenson, “How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich,” Rolling Stone, Nov. 24, 2011.
[6] All Things Considered, NPR Radio broadcast, Oct. 11, 2011.
[7] According to Right Wing Watch, People for the American Way. Norquist’s organization, Americans for Tax Reform, spent close to $4 million in the midterm election to elect Republicans to Congress, and 235 Congressmen and 41 Senators, all Republicans, have signed Norquist’s “Taxpayer Protection Pledge.”
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