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applegrove

(118,696 posts) Wed Dec 23, 2015, 07:18 PM Dec 2015

How Our Corrupt Campaign Finance System Enabled Trump -- And Kneecapped His Rivals

How Our Corrupt Campaign Finance System Enabled Trump -- And Kneecapped His Rivals

by Jason Linkins at the Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-gop-campaign-finance_5679fd64e4b06fa6887f66d1?utm_hp_ref=politics

"SNIP..............

But there's another way in which Trump has broken with the rest of the field: He's not relying on the Citizens United-spawned campaign finance regime, with its welter of nonprofits and super PACs. In October, he told the nine super PACs that appeared to be supporting him to "stop using his name, likeness, and slogans and to return any donations they have already received," The Washington Post's Jenna Johnson reported at the time.

Rather than losing out as a result of this approach, Trump is thriving while his rivals stumble around inside the dark-money Tomorrowland their party continues to build. Even if the business mogul is no normal person's idea of a standard-bearer for a better, more citizen-focused politics, his opponents have more than ably made the case that this massive injection of money into the political system has -- at least at the presidential heights -- "weirded" it out of proportion.

From elaborate and clunky apparatuses for skirting Federal Election Commission laws to a failure to recognize the need for retail politics, Trump's rivals make it seem like it was smarter to simply reject the Citizens United era's promise of unlimited campaign funds. Instead of innovation, there is confusion. Instead of freedom, there seems to be a dead weight around the necks of campaigns that might otherwise have been competent.

...........

Trump's got no strings attached to his person, no albatrosses around his neck. But for everyone else in the field, it looks like these burdens are all that this new era of unlimited campaign dollars actually has to offer.

.................SNIP"