Blaming Citizens United for Obama's Problems

In my inaugural column in April for the re-vamped Breitbart.com, “The Left’s War on the First Amendment,” I concluded by saying:

I am sure in the coming weeks and months you will hear a lot of falsehoods about the Citizens United decision. The Left’s war will only intensify if President Obama loses in the fall because they will need a scapegoat for their failed liberal agenda. I will wear it as a badge of honor if the Citizens United case is used as a foil by the Left. In the end, we won because Citizens United was on the right side of the First Amendment.

Those words stand as true today as they did in April. There have now been at least 12 resolutionsin  this Congress calling to amend the U.S. Constitution, limiting free speech in the process. The latest, by Congressman Adam Schiff, will go nowhere – like the others – because it guts the First Amendment. Democrats’ continued attempts to chill free speech are simply a ploy to protect President Obama and other incumbents. As President Obama’s poll numbers continue to fall, the Left’s infatuation with the Citizens United decision continues to become only more crazed.

A little background on recent campaign finance decisions at the U.S. Supreme Court: in Citizens United v. FEC, the Court struck down an attempt by incumbent members of Congress to limit political speech. In Arizona Free Enterprise v. Bennett, the Court made clear, as it did when previously striking down the Millionaire’s Amendment, that campaign finance limits and rules cannot vary based on the financial success of one candidate over another. In Arizona Free Enterprise, the legislature had crafted a public financing system that provided additional funding to publicly financed candidates if their opponents were more prodigious fundraisers or were supported by outside groups. The Court rightly found that it is not the place of the government to subsidize one candidate because his opponent is successful.

Congressman Schiff, with his hopeless amendment, seeks to overturn these two decisions, which would result in fundamentally rewriting the First Amendment and our right to freedom of speech. He would in effect grant the government control over political speech and allow it to choose the winners and losers; that is not what our Founding Fathers intended.

It is completely absurd for the government to mandate or prevent political speech. The Citizens United decision instituted a fair system that applies to all Americans. The crazed Left needs the mainstream media, unions, and their liberal special interest groups to dominate the airwaves. They fear the increased speech that Citizens United unleashed, because they can’t control the message. The Left fears the electorate; they fear educated voters. They know they don’t have the support of the American people because of their failed policies, and they’re afraid of being exposed.