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Townhall
Incumbents
Always Win
John Stossel
Oct 29, 2014
I'm told that the public is "angry" at today's politicians. Eighty-two
percent disapprove of the job Congress is doing. So will Tuesday's
election bring a big shakeup?
No. Congressional reelection rates never drop below 85 percent.
The last big "wave" election was 1994, when Democrats lost control of
both houses. The media called it a "revolution," and the late Peter
Jennings from ABC likened Americans to 2-year-olds throwing a tantrum.
Even that year, the reelection rate was 90 percent.
Matt Kibbe of the group FreedomWorks and Hadley Heath Manning of
Independent Women's Forum came on my show to say they don't believe
that this will be the year voters "throw the bums out."
Incumbents have all sorts of built-in advantages, said Manning: "Once
you're in office, you have network ties, usually with a big party
organization, usually with other officeholders. You have ties to donors
who have helped you in your previous round of fundraising."
In the U.S., she says, "we don't have kings, (but) we still have
political dynasties."
Politicians in office game the system to make it tougher for outsiders
to challenge them. They always talk about getting money out of
politics. They don't mean getting taxpayer money out of their own end
of politics -- all those privileges such as government mailings and
websites and broadcasting facilities right in the Capitol Building. No,
the money they want to limit is outsiders' money.
When Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) says "this money is suffocating the
airwaves, silencing the voices of the many," she means she wants to
prevent private groups funding political messages that sometimes
criticize people like her. Expensive TV ads might allow unknown
challengers to break through. Can't have that.
Manning says Democrats who now push the idea of a Constitutional
amendment to limit campaign ads "want to rig the system so that their
donors are still able to give -- whether that's labor unions or people
who typically support Democrats -- but they want to silence the
opposition."
They make it sound as if labor union donations are a natural part of
the democratic process -- but money from corporations and independent
interest groups, by contrast, "interferes" with elections.
Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) led the charge against evil "outside"
money when he got what he and reporters called campaign finance
"reform" passed a dozen years ago. The Supreme Court wisely threw much
of that out, because it was an attack on free speech. But there are
still a million rules left -- plenty to discourage "amateurs" from
attempting to participate in politics.
For the rest of this article and more, go to Townhall
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