I met David Keene of the American Conservative Union for the first time a few months ago. In casual conversation, he referred to the ACU’s “clients.” That made me suspect that something like this was going on. I think this is somewhat more common in the Red team than it is in the Blue team. I wish I thought the Blue team didn’t have any of it.
I’ve always admired FedEx as an enterprise, even as I deplored its owner’s right-wing politics. But I give him some points for not giving in to the shakedown.
Of course the ACU wouldn’t have tried this if it didn’t usually get away with it. That’s worth pondering, as the Red (in)justices on the Supreme Court consider getting rid of the ban on corporate bribery of politicians (thinly disguised as “campaign contributions”) in the name of free speech.
Roberts, Scalia, Alito, and Thomas all voted to allow corporations to fix state court cases, in states with elected judges, by spending unlimited funds to elect friendly judges who could then rule on their sponsors’ cases. So it’s not at all far-fetched that they will vote to legalize corporate bribery in the other two branches, or that the could persuade Justice Kennedy to go along with them, as he did in Bush v. Gore.
