Blog #4 - Conservative Actions PAC Dominates Super Tuesday Airwaves

Super Tuesday, a day on which 11 states hold primaries, leads to a war over recognition for campaign advertisers. This day could be referred to as the super bowl for presidential campaigns. Republican candidate Marco Rubio’s super PAC, Conservative Solutions PAC, has been making their dominant presence known over the past few weeks. Rubio’s group has most prominently made their mark in rival Ted Cruz’s home state, Texas, spending $1.5 million in advertisements. While Marco has made remarkable progress in the advertisement aspect, Cruz has yet to spend any money on the Super Tuesday states.

PACs have been a controversial topic ever since Citizens United v. FEC. There have been arguments that they are totally corrupt, while others protest that giving money is an unalienable right given to American citizens under the First Amendment. In my opinion, giving money to a cause or, in this case, campaign that you support is something that should be protected. Although I cannot wrap my head around the fact that it would be considered a part of freedom of speech, I still believe it is important that people should be able to express support to anything they want. My only problem is the significance of money in politics. Unfortunately, money is the driving force of all campaigns, presidential or not. This means that PACs are something that could very well sway elections. When large amounts of money are given by corporations, we completely disregard the most important factor of elections. Democracy. Now the average American citizen (someone who usually doesn’t have millions of dollars to donate) no longer has as big of a voice as our Founding Fathers would’ve liked.

This relates to class because we just finished discussing campaign financing and PACs. After 1972, when the Watergate scandal exposed illegal donations to candidates, the Federal Campaign Reform Law was made. This law limited personal donations to $1,000 (although this was later raised to $2,000 by the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act). It also created the FEC which was later a part of a supreme court case on regulating PAC spending (FEC argued that PACs were corrupt).