If the contribution limits are not violated, then their everyday normal operation generally escapes notice.  We just assume regular order; the campaign finance law works as it should.  A donor gives within the limit, the donation is reported, and all is well.  The Center for Competitive Politics has challenged this complacency and raised one interesting question about the limits as they are now structured.

What an odd opinion from the Court of Appeals in Stop This Insanity. The Court decides that the regulatory burden imposed on a political activity satisfies constitutional requirements if there is an alternative, simpler route to roughly the same result. This is questionable enough, but the Court takes additional comfort in the fact that, in its view, the activity—corporate PAC activity—is “functionally obsolete”, a “relic”, an “artifact”. Stop This Insanity, Inc. v. FEC, No. 13-5008, 2014 WL 3824225, at *1-3 (D.C. Cir Aug. 5, 2014).  So, somehow, the constitutional standing of a legal restriction is strengthened by its pointlessness.

The Times was doing well with the younger set in recent days, hammering home the virtues of legalized access to marijuana, but it has taken a step back. Now it is questioning  the right of youth to accept unlimited support from parents and other relatives through family-established or -financed Super PACs.

This was one opportunity for the realization of a young person’s dream—unlimited financial support from family which could not be used as leverage to tell the kids what to do. This spending must be independent.  It’s the law.

The McCutcheon decision intensified the disagreement about when the use of money in politics is corrupt, and when it is just politics.  Chief Justice Roberts endorsed in general terms one bond that money creates—official “responsiveness” to constituents, whom he apparently took to include donors.  The Chief Justice ruled out legislative attacks on the “ingratiation” and “access” that contributions might buy.  McCutcheon v. FEC, 134 S.Ct. 1434, 1441, 1462 (2014).  Critics were appalled.  Yet, for all the excitement that followed, neither the few lines the Roberts opinion almost summarily devoted to the question nor much of the response to him helped clarify the critical issue: what is tolerable politics and what crosses the line?

The New York Times this morning reports on political spending in this election cycle, but it also wishes to explain to readers the meaning of all these dollars. So the article this morning about the money going into Senate and House races links the cash to “consequences [that] are already becoming apparent”: candidate loss of control over their messaging and a sharply negative tone. The grounds for these conclusions are not drawn from the the numbers.  They are added on.