{"id":4115,"date":"2014-07-16T16:34:02","date_gmt":"2014-07-16T16:34:02","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2014-08-18T02:49:28","modified_gmt":"2014-08-18T02:49:28","slug":"gil-fulbright-ads-are-very-funny-but-probably-counterproductive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/franklycurious.com\/wp\/2014\/07\/16\/gil-fulbright-ads-are-very-funny-but-probably-counterproductive\/","title":{"rendered":"Gil Fulbright Ads Are Very Funny But Probably Counterproductive"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GilThe anti-corruption group Represent.US<\/i><\/a> has decided to run a fake political campaign in Kentucky. It is hilarious, as I will show you in a moment. But it does bother me to some extent. The reason is that focusing attention on corruption during a campaign doesn’t cause people to get involved as much as to not even bother to vote. And when that happens, it hurts the liberal cause—at least in the short term. In the long term, who knows? But I’m rather cynical about getting money out of politics. Campaigns like Represent.US<\/i> strike me as going for a knock out blow when the best bet is always to push back—work for marginal reform.<\/p>\n

Our most recent problem with political corruption is that Republican Presidents have appointed Supreme Court justices who have defined corruption so narrowly that it basically doesn’t exist. According to John Roberts, handing a pile of cash to a politician while winking at him is not corruption. According to him, what you need is to have the CEO of an arms contractor hand a politician a pile of cash; the CEO must say, “I’m giving you this pile of cash so that you will give me the contract for blah blah blah; the politician must then say, “Because I am getting this pile of cash, I am going to give you the contract for blah blah blah”; and this must all be done during halftime at the Super Bowl when at least 15 cameras and microphones record it. Then you have corruption. Otherwise, “What corruption? Sure I took plenty of money from that CEO but his company just happened to be the best one for blah blah blah.”<\/p>\n

The truth is that in the Kentucky race, if the Democrat Grimes wins, it will only be barely. And ads and other political events that will tend to equate them might be all the difference in the world. And if the Senate goes Republican next year and one of the Supreme Court justices dies, it is almost certain that the Senate will not approve any<\/i> replacement that Obama proposes. And if a Republican wins the White House in 2016, you can kiss the Supreme Court goodbye for next two decades at least.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Alison Lundergan Grimes seems to have a good campaign, and might be able to leverage this Represent.US<\/i> campaign. It is very clear that McConnell will certainly have more<\/i> money over all and more<\/i> money from outside the state. And, as I show further below, there is some false equivalence going on from Represent.US<\/i>. But maybe I see things this way just because I’m old and fearful and I’ve only seen this country become more and more of an oligarchy. But given the current state of things, our only hope is a Constitutional Amendment. And I’m not sure this ad campaign leads us in that direction so much as it leads us to, “Both sides suck, let’s not vote!” Because I assure you, the rich know who will cut their taxes, and they will<\/i> vote.<\/p>\n

Having said all that, this videos are great. Here is Gil Fulbright for Senate<\/i>:<\/p>\n