The explosion of issue advocacy — money spent by individuals and independent groups to support political causes — threatens to make even an outright ban on “soft” money irrelevant. Worse, much of what passes for “issue advocacy” is really covert campaign financing. Still worse, it can’t be regulated.
Money, Politics, and Power
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
State of the Debate: Quayle Hunting
Dan and Marilyn Quayle send–uh, try to send–a message on family values.
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How Low Can You Go? Made of Sterner Stuff
MADE OF STERNER STUFF The Lewinsky investigation has put me to reflecting about the many opportunities for rectitude that were missed in our past. Americans have now been told, all too late, about the illicit sexual behavior of presidents from Thomas Jefferson to JFK. Just think of how much better informed and more righteous the […]
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The Power Elite Now
Power in America today looks far different from the picture that C. Wright Mills painted nearly half a century ago.
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Old Party, New Energy
I n the mid-1970s, the founding fathers of the New Right almost walked away from the Republican Party. Sickened by Watergate and angry at what they perceived as the Republican Party’s moderation, Richard Viguerie, Howard Phillips, and Paul Weyrich strove to bring together the disparate conservative forces spawned by Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign into […]
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Party Decline
A lthough the Republic’s Founders dreaded the divisiveness of “faction,” political parties have proved essential to the promise of American democracy. Parties bridge the structural bias against government activism in the constitutional separation of powers and allow ordinary citizens who lack economic influence to aggregate political power. Hence, a strong party system is more crucial […]
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The Nationalism We Need
There are two faces of American nationalism-one negative, one positive. The negative face wants to block trade, deter immigrants, and eschew global responsibilities. The positive one wants to reduce poverty among the nation’s children, ensure that everyone within America has decent health care, and otherwise improve the lives of all our people. Both give priority […]
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An Emerging Democratic Majority
The 1994 election devastated the self-confidence of the Democratic Party, and 1996 only partially restored it. After narrowly escaping the “Republican revolution,” many Democrats have lowered their expectations and become resigned to the prospect of center-right government. And now President Clinton’s budget and tax deal with the Republicans in Congress has left his own party without […]
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Constitutional Amendmentitis
The rash of amendments being proposed by Republicans has profound — and dangerous — implications for our system of government.
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Who Owns the Future?
They claim to be riding a wave of historical change. The wave is global in its reach and unstoppable in its force. Those who get in the way are representatives of an old, obsolete order; they may put up a fight, but they will be beaten in the inevitable transformation. So Newt Gingrich and other […]
