Put Your Mouth Where Your Money Is

The Solipsist is unlikely ever to vote for a candidate endorsed by the National Rifle Association. To be fair, though, the National Rifle Association is unlikely ever to endorse a candidate that the Solipsist would be likely to vote for. The point is that an endorsement from the NRA essentially means nothing to the Solipsist one way or the other; we suspect that our ideological opposites have similar non-feelings towards endorsements from organized labor or the ACLU. We wonder, then, why groups like the NRA are so opposed to legislation that would require them to identify themselves clearly when they produce advertisements advocating the election or defeat of a candidate.

Back before the Supreme Court ruled last year that corporations could spend unlimited amounts of money to support political candidates, Republicans complained that spending restrictions were effectively unlawful restrictions on (corporate) freedom of speech. In general, they suggested that the remedy for abusive spending was not to limit such spending; instead, corporations, as well as unions and non-profit organizations, should be allowed to spend freely, as long as they engaged in full disclosure. Just like candidates, they would have to provide spokespeople who would come on at the end of advertisements to declare that they approved the message's content. Surprisingly, though, now that the Supreme Court removed spending limits, the Republican caucus has decided that full disclosure is not such a great idea after all.

As Nancy Pelosi says,“I don’t know why, if they’re so proud of their point of view, they don’t want to stand by their ads." Us neither. . . .

Unless. . . .

Maybe it's not about supporting candidates. Maybe it's just about attacking them. It's not that the NRA doesn't want us to know what candidates it supports; they don't want us to know which candidates they oppose, knowing that this would inspire a groundswell of support from the right-thinking majorities of the western world? Seems a little convoluted and round-about to us, but nothing else makes sense. So unless the NRA and its ilk are composed of irrational psychopaths, this is the only explanation we can believe. Right?