The SuperPAC War is Joined

President Obama has signaled to “wealthy Democratic donors that he wants them to start contributing to an outside group supporting his re-election, reversing a long-held position as he confronts a deep financial disadvantage on a vital front in the campaign,” the New York Times reports.

Jim Messina, the campaign manager for Obama for America, had this to say:

In 2010, the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case opened the door to a new wave of so-called Super PACs — non-candidate political committees that can receive and spend unlimited money from special interests. For the first time, these committees could accept money from corporations, not just wealthy individuals.

The decision has accelerated a dangerous trend toward a political system increasingly dominated by big-money interests with disproportionate power to spend freely to influence our elections and our government.

It’s a trend the President has fought against, coming into office with a mission to limit special-interest influence in Washington. He put in place the most sweeping ethics reforms in history to close the revolving door between government and lobbyists. And he’s overseen the most open administration ever — reversing Bush-era policies designed to limit Freedom of Information Act requests and disclosing White House visitor records so that Americans can see how their government works.

The President opposed the Citizens United decision. He understood that with the dramatic growth in opportunities to raise and spend unlimited special-interest money, we would see new strategies to hide it from public view. He continues to support a law to force full disclosure of all funding intended to influence our elections, a reform that was blocked in 2010 by a unanimous Republican filibuster in the U.S. Senate. And the President favors action — by constitutional amendment, if necessary — to place reasonable limits on all such spending.

But this cycle, our campaign has to face the reality of the law as it currently stands.

Over the last few months, Super PACs affiliated with Republican presidential candidates have spent more than $40 million on television and radio, almost all of it for negative ads.

Last week, filings showed that the Super PAC affiliated with Mitt Romney’s campaign raised $30 million in 2011 from fewer than 200 contributors, most of them from the financial sector. Governor Romney personally helped raise money for this group, which is run by some of his closest allies.

Meanwhile, other Super PACs established for the sole purpose of defeating the President — along with “nonprofits” that also aren’t required to disclose the sources of their funding — have raised more than $50 million. In the aggregate, these groups are expected to spend half a billion dollars, above and beyond what the Republican nominee and party are expected to commit to try to defeat the President.

With so much at stake, we can’t allow for two sets of rules in this election whereby the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm.

That is fine by me. Personally, I didn’t think the President had expressed a prohibition to his supporters that they must not donate to SuperPACs. But he does oppose the Citizens United decision which results in SuperPACs, so some Republican hypocrites and liberal idealists will demand that the President or any Democrat not use SuperPACs. To both of them I laugh. I laugh at the Republicans for their gall. And I laugh at liberal idealists because they are so naïve it is cute. To the Republican critics of this decision I say shove it up where the sun don’t shine. To the liberal critics, unlike you I am not one of those idealist fantasy liberals who insists on tying one arm behind my back just to stand on principle. Principles are for after you win elections, not before.

We must do everything and anything legal we can to win this election. Super PACs are legal. We want to make it illegal in the future, but we fight in the present. We fight in reality, not fantasy.