Sen. Josh Hawley To Introduce Bill Reversing Citizens United | RealClearPolitics
More than a decade ago, President Obama scolded the Supreme Court for reversing a century of law and opening the floodgates for special interest to spend without limit in our elections.
It was during the State of the Union, and while the former president qualified his criticism by offering all due deference to the separation of powers, Justice Samuel Alito was caught on camera muttering an objection. Seated in the front of the House of Representatives, Alito seemed to say, Not true.
Meanwhile, Chief Justice John Roberts, who had employed a young lawyer from Missouri just two years prior, didn t move a muscle.
Sen. Josh Hawley told RealClearPolitics that the episode predates me, but on the substance of the question, the senior Republican senator from Missouri, the same young lawyer who once clerked for Roberts on the high court, sides with Obama, not the conservative justices.
Albeit for very different reasons. I am an originalist, he said in a Monday interview, and I don t think you can make an originalist case for business corporations being treated like individuals when it comes to the right to political speech.
Thirteen years removed from that exchange between Obama and the justices, Hawley plans to introduce legislation that would gut Citizens United v. FEC, RCP is first to report. My goal is to get corporate money out of our politics, he said. His aim is to stop corporate influence from controlling our elections.
This kind of rhetoric is not unusual. But it usually comes from Democrats.
President Biden pledged to overturn Citizens United and bring to heal the Super PACs that shower politicians with the kind of unlimited anonymous donations known colloquially as dark money. His closest ally in this effort: Progressive Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, who blames the decision for turning America into an oligarchy where billionaires buy elections.
Senator Hawley may not be an idiot, but his idea is.