FOCUS: Charles Pierce | Frank Rich Thinks Donald Trump Will Fix Campaign Finance Law
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "How exactly does Trump's tasteless flaunting of his wealth work against the politics created by the destruction of our tepid campaign-finance laws?"
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Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "How exactly does Trump's tasteless flaunting of his wealth work against the politics created by the destruction of our tepid campaign-finance laws?"
READ MORE
Frank Rich Thinks Donald Trump Will Fix Campaign Finance Law
22 September 15
Less than 24 hours after his Veep sweep, the New York Magazine columnist is taken for a sucker.
teve M at No More Mister Nice Blog largely puts paid to the dilettante's wet dream that Frank Rich has loosed upon the world on the subject of the Libidinous Visitor. (There's a reason they set Guys and Dolls in New York. There are more obvious marks walking around there than anywhere else in the world.) But there's more rancid meat on the decaying bone to be examined. There is, for example, this passage, which Rich apparently wrote from an office in the Op-Ed department of Neverland.
(It took me a while to get this far through the piece because I nearly drowned in movie references.)
nother change Trump may bring about is a GOP rethinking of its embrace of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision unleashing unlimited campaign contributions. Citizens United was supposed to be a weapon wielded mainly against Democrats, but Trump is using it as a club to bludgeon Republicans. "I'm using my own money," he said when announcing his candidacy. "I'm not using lobbyists, I'm not using donors. I don't care. I'm really rich." By Washington etiquette, it's a no-no for a presidential candidate to gloat about his wealth. Especially if you're a wealthy Republican, it's axiomatic that you follow the George H.W. Bush template of pretending to savor pork rinds. But Trump has made a virtue of flaunting his fortune and glitzy lifestyle — and not just because that's the authentic Trump. His self-funding campaign may make him more effective than any Democrat in turning Citizens United into a political albatross for those who are enslaved to it.
In addition to being a complete non sequitur, this argument also is all my bollocks. How exactly does Trump's tasteless flaunting of his wealth work against the politics created by the destruction of our tepid campaign-finance laws? Look, Donald Trump is a tasteless clown. That means we should knuckle the Koch Brothers and elect Bernie Sanders, who has made repealing Citizens United a litmus test for his judicial appointments? Does any human actually think this way? Also, does Rich think that the people are supporting Trump because of their disgust with money in politics? Or because they realize that all politics is a sham of a façade? People are supporting Trump because he says the right nasty things about the people who scare them. Period. If and when he loses, those people will move on to the next shrewd bigot who steps up to the mic.
I stopped reading when Rich got to the point where he argued that the Trump candidacy would have an equal (if opposite) effect on American politics that the failed Goldwater campaign did in 1964. Frank Rich looks at a freak show and sees a movement. That is such a New York thing to do. But his peroration certainly rang familiar.
If that's entertainment, so be it. If Hillary Clinton's campaign or the Republican Party is reduced to rubble along the way, we can live with it. Trump will not make America great again, but there's at least a chance that the chaos he sows will clear the way for those who can.
Back during the 2000 campaign, Rich was similarly distressed with the state of American politics, especially by the presence of Al Gore, that boring twerp, on the ballot. This is what Rich wrote:
In the true Clinton manner, both are also chameleons, ready to don new guises in a flash—from Mr. Gore's down-home wardrobe to Mr. Bush's last-minute emergence as a champion of campaign finance reform, patients' rights and clean air. The substantive disputes between the men are, in truth, minimal in a prosperous post-cold-war era when both parties aspire to Rockefeller Republicanism (literally so in that each standard-bearer is the prince of a brand-name American dynasty).
Gee, too bad there wasn't a Donald Trump around that year to reduce campaigns to rubble, and to expose the phoniness of the system, and to unleash a cascade of reform throughout the system through his renegade performance skills.
How'd that work out anyway?
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