Cagle Post: Obama’s Super PAC Two-Step

In the name of protecting his fundraising juggernaut, President Obama has reneged on campaign finance promises that he knew full well he would not keep. Back in 2008, after stating repeatedly that he would abide by the public finance system, then-candidate Barack Obama reversed himself in favor of raising unlimited private money, setting new fundraising records. Now in 2012, President Obama is flip-flopping on Super PACs, the federal PACs that only make independent expenditures in support of or in opposition to candidates.

Over the last two years President Obama has been criticizing the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC decision – even lecturing the Justices seated in front of him during his 2010 State of the Union Speech. In the run up to the 2010 mid-term elections, President Obama made the Citizens United decision an issue in the campaign on a daily basis. In his criticism, the president sought to demonize Citizens United, even calling it a “threat to our democracy.”

It is President Obama’s policies that threaten democracy, not the Citizens United decision. The government takeover of health care, unaccountable czars, and unconstitutional recess appointments are but a few examples of Obama’s disregard for our republican system of government. President Obama and his policies are a threat to our democratic republic and the First Amendment rights reinstated via Citizens United are the antidote to his bully pulpit. With political speech freed once again, the American people thoroughly rejected President Obama’s arguments by electing a Republican controlled House of Representatives in 2010.

Read more at Cagle here.