Here at GraniteGrok, we relish the debate. I recently put up a post on NH Rebellion’s time on WMUR’s CLOSEUP – Bulldog has asked to put up a rebuttal which I provide below completely but with some reformatting to make it more “bloggish”:
I am writing in response to Skip Murphy’s post of December 6, 2015 “CLOSEUP last week: NH Rebellion attack on Free Speech”. When looking at both the United States and New Hampshire constitutions, it’s important to understand that the rights apply to INDIVIDUALS (people), commonly referred to as citizens. NH Rebellion is a cross-partisan organization looking to enhance the rights of the people to have their speech heard and not be drowned out by a small number of special interests who build a system of bought-and-paid-for politicians that subvert the will of the people.
The issues we address regarding campaign finance and potential solutions are not about abridging the freedom of speech of the people. Citizens United is about corporations and unions having the right to spend unlimited amounts of money on political causes. Corporations are not people notwithstanding anything Mitt Romney said.
In the column, the claim is made that NH Rebellion “leans more Democrat than Republican in that it is all about being all about overthrowing the Citizens United Supreme Court decision…” According to a recent Bloomberg Politics poll, 80% of Republicans oppose Citizens United and should be overturned. By contrast, 83% of Democrats agree. Using that is the reflection of the sentiment, okay; the group might lean slightly left.
The claim that “What NH Rebellion is advocating for is a new system for political campaigns – public funding and constraining of candidate and voter / donor speech.” You currently have a system of constrained speech. There are donor limits to candidates right now. The Federal Election Commission notes that corporations are prohibited from donating to candidates. So are minors. So are labor unions. Same with federal contractors.
A conservative solution that has been proposed and is worthy of debate: unlimited contributions to candidates with real-time, online disclosure. Many argue that it eliminates the need for super PACs and protects the “money is speech” argument. It’s a position that some Republican presidential candidates endorse and is one that Jim Rubens supported last year during his run for U.S. Senate.
As far as public funding of campaigns, Dan Weeks specifically mentioned tax credits or vouchers. This, combined with a matching fund system, would allow the small donor to easily compete with the big guys. For example, under a matching fund system, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, and Rand Paul would be able to beat Jeb Bush on the individual donations. Here’s why: Only 3% of Bush’s contributions came from small donors.
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And of course, I’ll have a few thoughts in the future – I’ve already spotted a few errors both in logic and in fact (heh!).
