subgenius said:
And I had the hardest time explaining how big money undercuts one man one vote in a different thread.
"But the big contributor still only has one vote."
You are of course right. However, this is something that should be dealt with via public awareness. A candidate who makes a quid pro quo for cash should be exposed for this voters to expunge. However, big donations do not necessarily get you favors.
Bush for instance has gotten quite a bit of money from gun owners and their groups, however he still says he will resign the Clinton restrictions on gun models and capacity (aka the "assault" weapon ban) when it comes up for renewal.
Look at Bill Clinton, he garnered a multitude of support running on a middle class tax cut. When the time came however he reneged in favor of trying to balance the budget.
Are these big politicians really for sale? If anything, these politicians take advantage of the big donors. Look at Clinton, he would give bigtime partisan liberals a night in Lincoln bedroom for their donation and sign every piece of the contract of america that came to him.
Is the problem congress or the oval office? With congress you at least have a larger sample of politicians to look at. However, one or two people who change their votes after a big donation doesn't seem to be a epidemic problem. It seems to be a localized character issue. That is why we have watchdog groups (which in my view should get more airtime from the networks) to root these people out.
However, "big money" has become one of these boogeymen that people have found easy to oppose but harder to define. Joe Sixpack realizes "big money", "big corporations", "big oil", etc are bad things but can't explain in detail why. I don't expect people's distrust of "big money" to end any time soon.
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