Former FEC commissar Trevor Potter says the Supreme Court “should get more politically savvy.”
Potter really means the High Court should agree with him, and allow incumbents in Congress to write the campaign finance rules under which they — and their opponents — operate, undisturbed by constitutional review.
Last week, the Court heard McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a case concerning Shaun McCutcheon, an Alabama businessman, who wants to give $1,776 dollars to more candidates. He’s limited, because by law he cannot give over $48,600 to all federal candidates combined.
Why? Apparently those who contribute $48,600 or less to candidates they believe in are pure of heart, but that once that forty-eighth-thousandth-six-hundredth-and-first dollar is donated it can only be devoid of any decent intention, an unquestionable attempt to corrupt our government.
Most observers recognize that such an arbitrary limit is constitutionally suspect and likely to be voided. Including Potter, who is already furious that the Roberts Court has restricted congressional legislation dealing with campaign regulation in all five cases it has thus far considered. Potter accuses it of “judicial hubris” and “contempt for legislative authority” and “a surprising lack of respect for Congress’s expertise on political matters.”
How could “a lack of respect” for Congress be “surprising”?
Speaking of “political savvy,” where’s Potter’s?
Potter concludes that the Supremes “should leave politics to the politicians, who have a better sense of when the intersection of fundraising and lawmaking leads to corruption.”
Sure, politicians have a better sense of that corrupt intersection … they’re always there.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.