GOP Uses 'Cromnibus' To Let Rich People Give Tons More Money To GOP

Take note, progressive Wonkette scum -- the GOP establishment is putting on a masterclass in how to consolidate a political victory. The 2014 midterms saw the party's elders systematically strangle Tea Party challengers in their cribs and ride a wave of outside money to victory. You might think that an alliance between the GOP and Republican-aligned groups would be nice for the party, but that's why you're a namby-pamby ally-having liberal and not a victorious Republican alpha man-beast. Politico's Ken Vogel shows us how the Republicans are using the " cromnibus " to finally yank Frankenstein's monster back to the lab.

A provision tucked deep inside the $1.1-trillion spending bill filed by Republicans on Tuesday night would dramatically increase the amount of money a single rich donor could give to national party committees each year — from $97,200 to as much as $777,600.[...]

The Democratic and Republican party committees have seen their clout plummet in recent years as power and cash have migrated to outside groups empowered by Citizens United and related decisions that allowed independent groups to raise and spend unlimited cash on ads boosting favorite candidates or savaging their opponents.

By contrast, the maximum contributions the national party committees can accept have ticked upward only slightly every two years to account for inflation.

And right now, all five of you who are reading this are like, YAWN, campaign finance is boring, moar dick jokez! Hey, shut up, okay? This is how power actually gets aggregated. It's boring on purpose, because if it's boring, the general public is less likely to pay attention to it.

A refresher: Once upon a time, there was a law called McCain-Feingold , and among other things, that law limited the amount of "soft money" that could be contributed to a national political party. This created a bottleneck for the plutocrats who actually finance American elections -- they still had all this cash, but they couldn't spend all of it where they used to spend it, UNFAIR TO RICH PEOPLE!

So McCain-Feingold began its long, slow death of a thousand cuts. Most of those cuts have been administered by the Supreme Court (thanks again, Justice Kennedy!), and now congressional Republicans are sitting in the corner, flicking open their butterfly knives and grinning in a really menacing way. This soft money provision is attached to a massive spending bill designed to avert a holiday-season shutdown of the federal government; it's going to pass, and Republicans know it.

Gaze upon this power play, ye Democrats, and despair. This is how it's done. This is how you drop a chandelier on the Koch brothers' heads and ride the rope up.

[Politico]

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