/>Eye on Washington: Colbert and the Super PACS
In a new series of articles, Young Fabian member Alex Adranghi brings us the highlights from the 2012 US Presidential Election Race.
We’ve seen intriguing developments in the past week concerning the greatest non-candidate of the Republican presidential primaries, satirist Stephen Colbert.
Real-life Democrat Colbert, host of fake right-wing news show ‘The Colbert Report’, has been poking fun at federal laws concerning the funding of political campaigns.
While donations to candidates’ campaigns are regulated, two recent federal rulings have encouraged the rise of the so-called ‘Super Political Action Committees’ or ‘Super PACs’. These allow corporations to raise unlimited funds to campaign in support of a candidate- without the need for there to be regulated coordination between the actions of the ‘Super PACs’ and those of the official campaign itself.
What may seem bizarre to the British is that this ‘freedom’ stems from a 19th century ruling of the Supreme Court which counts corporations as individuals in terms of freedom of expression. The ruling prohibits infringement on their ‘free speech.’ The power of corporations over elections was further reinforced in a 1976 ruling, which formally equated money with ‘free speech’.
Last week a poll in South Carolina placed Colbert at five percent, ahead of major candidate Jon Huntsman who subsequently dropped out of the running at the weekend. This led to Colbert’s announcement that he was exploring entering the race in South Carolina, placing his own ‘Super PAC’ into the hands of fellow satirist- and ‘Daily Show’ host- John Stewart.
This ‘Super PAC’ has already launched TV adverts in South Carolina portraying race leader Mitt Romney as a serial killer. This mocks the notion of corporations equalling people in terms of freedom of speech, using Romney’s career as a successful management consultant (where he liquidated troubled companies) to illustrate the point.
With no option in South Carolina to write-in names on the ballot, on Monday Colbert called for those who support him to place a vote for ex-contender Herman Cain who is ironically still on the ballot paper.
With wild media coverage of the faux possible candidacy, comes the real possibility of a ‘Colbert Effect’. There is speculation that Colbert could hurt libertarian Ron Paul due to their mutual appeal to younger independent voters.
We’ll just have to see if a protest vote materialises this Saturday.
Alex Adranghi is a member of the Young Fabians
