Regulating our most prized speech has proven to be ineffective, arbitrary, and it criminalizes (and no doubt ices) run-of-the-mill free speech. (It also has its roots in the racist crusade of South Carolina’s Sen. Ben Tillman, who sponsored the first federal campaign finance law, but today’s activists prefer not to grapple with that legacy, nor are they ever asked to.) The threshold should be pretty damn high for placing limits on it. The icky feeling campaign finance activists get from the idea of more than $2,600 isn’t enough.
Another reality check: 2012 was the most expensive campaign year in history, clocking in at $7 billion, according to the FEC.
There was a lot of hand-wringing over that number when the FEC announced the stat, with this bit from Politico typical: “The total number of dollars spent on the 2012 election exceeded the number of people on this planet.”
$7 billion would run the federal government for about 16 hours. The 2012 campaign was a garage sale value by comparison. We never hear any hand-wringing about that number.
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