Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Three pillars of conservative thought demand a constitutional curb on campaign finance

Three pillars of conservative thought demand a constitutional curb on campaign finance

"Our government must be solely accountable to the governed — we, the American people," argues Jim Rubens.

mj0007/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Rubens was a Republican state senator in New Hampshire from 1994 to 1998. He's a board member of American Promise, which seeks to amend the Constitution to allow tighter controls on money in politics.

This month I shared the stage at American Promise's citizen leadership conference with Rep. Jamie Raskin, a liberal Democrat from Maryland. We differ on policy, but the two of us join most every American in agreeing on this deepest fundamental: Our government must be solely accountable to the governed — we, the American people.

To this end, to protect and preserve the world's oldest democratic republic, we will break the suffocating grip of concentrated big-money. We will get a 28th Amendment added to our cherished and ever-more-perfect Constitution.

Democrats are overwhelmingly on board. Two-thirds of Republican voters are on board. Now is the time to get Republicans in Congress to join us in large numbers. To do so we must persuade their most conservative constituents. And we can do that because big-money corruption is undermining three critical conservative priorities: capitalism, low taxes and federalism.


Our Founders unleashed capitalism — specifically, free-market capitalism — giving us greater wealth, progress and well-being worldwide than in all human history. But the current system of legalized political corruption has mutated free-market capitalism into crony capitalism.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Under crony capitalism, government picks economic winners and losers by doling out tax breaks, loan guarantees, regulatory favors and contract awards. Instead of delivering better products and services to customers, business competes by buying influence or submitting to de facto extortion in Washington.

The result? Innovation and new business formation have dropped to historic lows. Financial engineering is in. Capital investment and long-term research and development are out. Crony capitalism is why we have broadband and cellular dead zones, the world's highest drug prices, ethanol subsidies, too-big-to-fail banks and multibillion-dollar weapons systems that don't work.

It's why young and non-white voters — who will be the majority in a generation — now favor socialism over capitalism. The pay-to-play influence economy — not the Squad, not MSNBC — is the single most direct threat to free-market capitalism.

Now, conservatives come in several flavors, from small-l libertarians and social conservatives to right-populists and internationalists. We fight internally over abortion, trade, immigration and war. But one pillar of conservative thought connects all of us: keeping taxes low. And sustainably low taxes come from sustainably low spending.

Conservatives and progressives have both learned the hard way that big money does not really care about right-versus-left philosophy. Big money is united behind an endless push for more spending and tax loopholes for their favored programs.

And big money is driving big spending in a big way — because crony capitalism is so much more profitable than slugging it out in a competitive marketplace. A study by Open The Books published in Forbes magazine found that, for each dollar spent lobbying, the top 10 spenders got $1,000 in taxpayer-funded grants and contracts. A Sunlight Foundation study found something similar: For each dollar spent on lobbying and political contributions, politically active corporations received $760 in tax breaks, loan guarantees and contracts.

Pay-to-play corruption is why we're entering a time of trillion-dollar-a-year deficits. It's why Washington has recklessly loaded crushing debt service onto the backs of young people. It's why we've fattened special interests and starved spending on the infrastructure and blue-sky research that power long-term prosperity.

In the end, the bill will come due in the form of whopping tax increases. We can draw a straight line from the corrupt, big-money system to short-termism, twisted monetary policy, unsustainable spending commitments and punishing future tax increases.

To tackle this, conservatives want to amend the Constitution to mandate a balanced federal budget amendment; 28 of the necessary 38 states are on board for ratification. Conservatives need more blue states to get there. And we need red states at American Promise, where we count 20 states on board for amending the Constitution to allow more campaign finance regulation.

Our shared goals, ending high-tax fiscal insanity and big-money corruption, are joined at the hip. You can envision a beautiful red-blue reformers marriage.

In the past three years I've met with conservative state legislators from several states advocating support for a 28th Amendment. They are really angry at Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, big unions and even fellow conservative Sheldon Adelson for pouring billions in from far away to buy elections. In swing presidential states, tight congressional races and even state legislative contests, a handful of billionaires from San Francisco, Manhattan and (probable) Saudi Arabia are tipping the scales.

When I ran for the Senate three years ago, total spending on the contest was $132 million — 95 percent of it from out of state. This is absolutely not what the Founders intended.

Because the hollowed-out media concentrate coverage on the candidates with the big money, the home-grown and locally funded candidates stay invisible. Voters are overwhelmed with a blizzard of ads paid for with "dark money" and filled with unrebutted lies. Debate is narrowed, voters get even more cynical and the issues get nationalized.

A conservative favorite from our Bill of Rights, the 10th Amendment reserves to the states and people all powers not expressly granted by the Constitution to the federal government. It guarantees respect for local preferences and political space to test and replicate successful policies. It makes the states our laboratories of democracy, and gives our form of government a unique structural advantage among nations. The corrupt, big-money system poses a direct threat to federalism, one of our strongest protections against the sort of tyranny that's spawned in the dark swamps of concentrated power.

In the end, conservatives in great numbers will join our movement because the pay-to-play, big-money system is killing free-market capitalism, exploding spending and debt and concentrating power in Washington. So those who want a 28th Amendment should have absolute confidence that Republicans have principled and powerful motivations to get aboard.

Read More

People voting

Jessie Harris (left,) a registered independent, casts a ballot at during South Carolina's Republican primary on Feb. 24.

Joe Lamberti for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Our election system is failing independent voters

Gruber is senior vice president of Open Primaries and co-founder of Let Us Vote.

With the race to Election Day entering the homestretch, the Harris and Trump campaigns are in a full out sprint to reach independent voters, knowing full well that independents have been the deciding vote in every presidential contest since the Obama era. And like clockwork every election season, debates are arising about who independent voters are, whether they matter and even whether they actually exist at all.

Lost, perhaps intentionally, in these debates is one undebatable truth: Our electoral system treats the millions of Americans registered as independent voters as second-class citizens by law.

Keep ReadingShow less
ballot

The ballot used in Alaska's 2022 special election.

What is ranked-choice voting anyway?

Landry is the facilitator of the League of Women Voters of Colorado’s Alternative Voting Methods Task Force. An earlier version of this article was published in the LWV of Boulder County’s June 2023 Voter newsletter.

The term “ranked-choice voting” is so bandied about these days that it tends to take up all the oxygen in any discussion on better voting methods. The RCV label was created in 2002 by the city of San Francisco. People who want to promote evolution beyond our flawed plurality voting are often excited to jump on the RCV bandwagon.

However, many people, including RCV advocates, are unaware that it is actually an umbrella term, and ranked-choice voting in fact exists in multiple forms. Some people refer to any alternative voting method as RCV — even approval voting and STAR Voting, which don’t rank candidates! This article only discusses voting methods that do rank candidates.

Keep ReadingShow less
People voting
Paul J. Richards/Getty Images

Make safe states matter

Richie is co-founder and senior advisor of FairVote.

It’s time for “safe state” voters to be more than nervous spectators and symbolic participants in presidential elections.

The latest poll averages confirm that the 2024 presidential election will again hinge on seven swing states. Just as in 2020, expect more than 95 percent of major party candidate campaign spending and events to focus on these states. Volunteers will travel there, rather than engage with their neighbors in states that will easily go to Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. The decisions of a few thousand swing state voters will dwarf the importance of those of tens of millions of safe-state Americans.

But our swing-state myopia creates an opportunity. Deprived of the responsibility to influence which candidate will win, safe state voters can embrace the freedom to vote exactly the way they want, including for third-party and independent candidates.

Keep ReadingShow less
Map of the United States

The National EduDemocracy Landscape Map provides a comprehensive overview of where states are approaching democracy reforms within education.

The democracy movement ignores education races at its peril

Dr. Mascareñaz is a leader in the Cornerstone Project, a co-founder of The Open System Institute and chair of the Colorado Community College System State Board.

One of my clearest, earliest memories of talking about politics with my grandfather, who helped the IRS build its earliest computer systems in the 1960s, was asking him how he was voting. He said, “Everyone wants to make it about up here,” he said as gestured high above his head before pointing to the ground. “But the truth is that it’s all down here.” This was Thomas Mascareñaz’s version of “all politics is local” and, to me, essential guidance for a life of community building.

As a leader in The Cornerstone Project and a co-founder of The Open System Institute I've spent lots of time thinking and working at the intersections of education and civic engagement. I've seen firsthand how the democratic process unfolds at all levels — national, statewide, municipal and, crucially, in our schools. It is from this vantage point that I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that the democracy reform movement will not succeed unless it acts decisively in the field of education.

Keep ReadingShow less