They are anti-democratic and turning the 2012 presidential campaign
into an extreme sport for the wealthy, but they are destroying the
modern Republican Party in the process. Call it the paradox of the Super
PACs.
These big-money operations have made a mockery of campaign finance laws and even the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United
ruling by being shadow campaigns for candidates and giving a handful of
rich people an unprecedented level of power in the presidential
race. But perhaps we also should thank the multi-millionaires writing
outsized checks to benefit Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum because their
obstinate crusades—and Mitt Romney’s erratic replies—keep reminding
anyone paying attention that today's Republican Party is not just a
mess, but is collapsing from within.
It is not as if the Democrats are a model of unity—although they
may have more discipline than today’s GOP. Rather, the super PAC-funded
media wars among the Republicans have brought a breach into the open
that the GOP establishment can no longer contain: the fight between the
Republican Party's hardened right (religious conservatives and Tea
Partiers) and the party's business-first corporatists.
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