When President Obama broke with long-standing tradition and blasted the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Citizens United even as members of the court sat before him at the 2010 State of the Union address he was giving voice to the collective anxiety of the Democratic Party over a suddenly level political playing field.
In the decisions aftermath the unions lost an enormous advantage in fundraising and campaign spending in that all individuals and organizations - including corporations - were suddenly entitled to spend on political messages any amount those individuals and organizations deemed wise. The president was angry.
However chances are today he is very very thankful for Citizens United as Campaign 2012 gets underway.
We are entering the first campaign in which the full effects of Citizens United will be felt and Republican voters should be considering not just who can raise the most money or be the beneficiary of the most independent expenditures but who is best positioned to survive the coming deluge of independently-funded politics of personal destruction.
For although the president lambasted the court for returning the operation of the First Amendment to its original intent of protecting political speech he now may well be celebrating the decision for empowering the best hope he has of re-election: the demonization and destruction of his GOP opponent.
With his record bereft of accomplishment and unemployment certain to be at best above 8 percent the president will have to cue the worst sort of attacks on the Republican nominee and hope that George Soros and the rest of the wealthy left assisted by the best talent in Hollywood unleash every conceivable attack on Obamas opponent in the last month of the election.
Hundreds of millions in independent expenditures are a certainty. Billions may be coming.
Scorched earth tactics arent pretty but they can be effective and Republican primary voters ought to be evaluating their field with this certain onslaught in mind.
Will Obama partisans attack Mitt Romney for his Mormon faith? JFK and Al Smith before him endured attacks on their Catholic beliefs though not elaborately funded by individuals or electronically disseminated through the vast reaches of the new media. Of course the lefts big money wont hesitate to attack Romneys faith.
Will a sliced-and-diced version of the video of Rick Perry praying at a recent rally run in an endless loop in attack ads with sinister music playing beneath it and a scroll suggesting this most amiable of men intends some sort of theocracy?
Will the public hear heavily edited excerpts of Sarah Palin saying that she can see Russia from her from porch or of Michele Bachmann talking about Elvis or Concord?
The answers are yes yes and yes. Such attacks - and worse - will appear depending on the identity of the nominee. It will be the nastiest no-holds barred assault on an individual in the history of modern politics because unlimited money will combine with ubiquitous technology to make it so.
The president will issue denunciations of the worst of the slanders but the independent committees will not be public and the mainstream media will be slow to follow the money. Democrats are fond of arguing that the Swift Boat veterans destroyed John Kerry but their names and their message was public record from day one and their charges climbed a mountain of MSM hostility. People knew who made the charges and what those charges were and they were launched in August not the closing days of the campaign.
The attacks of 2012 on President Obamas opponent will be made late from behind impenetrable walls and not merely uninvestigated by MSM but vigorously abetted by the Manhattan-Beltway media elite.
It is hard to say which of the GOPs would-be nominees is best prepared to run this inevitable gauntlet but every voter ought to be thinking not only who is least likely to fold under such conditions but also whose armor presents the fewest gaps.
Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.
When President Obama broke with long-standing tradition and blasted the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Citizens United even as members of the court sat before him at the 2010 State of the Union address he was giving voice to the collective anxiety of the Democratic Party over a suddenly level political playing field.
In the decisions aftermath the unions lost an enormous advantage in fundraising and campaign spending in that all individuals and organizations - including corporations - were suddenly entitled to spend on political messages any amount those individuals and organizations deemed wise. The president was angry.
However chances are today he is very very thankful for Citizens United as Campaign 2012 gets underway.
We are entering the first campaign in which the full effects of Citizens United will be felt and Republican voters should be considering not just who can raise the most money or be the beneficiary of the most independent expenditures but who is best positioned to survive the coming deluge of independently-funded politics of personal destruction.
For although the president lambasted the court for returning the operation of the First Amendment to its original intent of protecting political speech he now may well be celebrating the decision for empowering the best hope he has of re-election: the demonization and destruction of his GOP opponent.
With his record bereft of accomplishment and unemployment certain to be at best above 8 percent the president will have to cue the worst sort of attacks on the Republican nominee and hope that George Soros and the rest of the wealthy left assisted by the best talent in Hollywood unleash every conceivable attack on Obamas opponent in the last month of the election.
Hundreds of millions in independent expenditures are a certainty. Billions may be coming.
Scorched earth tactics arent pretty but they can be effective and Republican primary voters ought to be evaluating their field with this certain onslaught in mind.
Will Obama partisans attack Mitt Romney for his Mormon faith? JFK and Al Smith before him endured attacks on their Catholic beliefs though not elaborately funded by individuals or electronically disseminated through the vast reaches of the new media. Of course the lefts big money wont hesitate to attack Romneys faith.
Will a sliced-and-diced version of the video of Rick Perry praying at a recent rally run in an endless loop in attack ads with sinister music playing beneath it and a scroll suggesting this most amiable of men intends some sort of theocracy?
Will the public hear heavily edited excerpts of Sarah Palin saying that she can see Russia from her from porch or of Michele Bachmann talking about Elvis or Concord?
The answers are yes yes and yes. Such attacks - and worse - will appear depending on the identity of the nominee. It will be the nastiest no-holds barred assault on an individual in the history of modern politics because unlimited money will combine with ubiquitous technology to make it so.
The president will issue denunciations of the worst of the slanders but the independent committees will not be public and the mainstream media will be slow to follow the money. Democrats are fond of arguing that the Swift Boat veterans destroyed John Kerry but their names and their message was public record from day one and their charges climbed a mountain of MSM hostility. People knew who made the charges and what those charges were and they were launched in August not the closing days of the campaign.
The attacks of 2012 on President Obamas opponent will be made late from behind impenetrable walls and not merely uninvestigated by MSM but vigorously abetted by the Manhattan-Beltway media elite.
It is hard to say which of the GOPs would-be nominees is best prepared to run this inevitable gauntlet but every voter ought to be thinking not only who is least likely to fold under such conditions but also whose armor presents the fewest gaps.
Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.
