Super PACs Are Better for America Than the Mainstream Media

And so, let the word go forth that Super PACs must bloom in every corner of America! Let the free speech flow! Let the money fall like rain, and let the national debate give voice to opinions other than those held by the MSM!

Wikipedia’s description of a Super PAC:

[A] political action committee, or PAC, is the name commonly given to a private group, regardless of size, organized to elect political candidates or to advance the outcome of a political issue or legislation. … The 2010 election marked the rise of a new political committee, dubbed “super PACs,” and officially known as “independent-expenditure only committees,” which can raise unlimited sums from corporations, unions and other groups, as well as individuals. … Super PACs are not allowed to coordinate directly with candidates or political parties and are required to disclose their donors, just like traditional PACs.

Question: How is any part of that description different from what the MSM does on a daily basis and what it has been doing for years now?

Just like Super PACs, the MSM does most of its partisan campaigning in print, on radio and on television, and just like Super PACs, the MSM enjoys unlimited amounts of cash, much of it coming from the super-rich top 1% and their big multi-national corporations.

There are, however, three important differences between a Super PAC and The New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, The L.A. Times, The Huffington Post, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, NBC, CBS, and all the other usual suspects. And those differences make the case for why Super PACs are better for America than the mainstream media:

1. Super PACS cannot legally coordinate with the campaigns they support, something the MSM quite obviously does on a daily basis — but in secret.

2. Super PACS make no secret about about their political agenda, while the MSM uses the phony pose of “objectivity” to target political opponents.

3. Super PACs make no secret of their desire to influence the outcome of elections, while the MSM’s most effective method of doing just that is pretending that they’re not doing just that.

Even though both political parties benefit from Super PACs, currently, the MSM is only talking about Super PACs that exist on the right, and this morning Politico (nothing more than an undeclared pro-Obama Super PAC) went after Republican Super PACs with a huge top-of-the page feature piece:

THREE BILLIONAIRES WHO’LL DRAG OUT THE RACE

The three men are contributing millions of dollars to a trio of outside groups flooding the airwaves in early voting states with brutal ads attacking Romney and ads backing the candidates they would prefer to win the Republican nomination…

Operatives say that without the super PAC air cover funded by these deep-pocketed political patrons and their associates, their favored candidates would have a tough time keeping their bare-bones campaigns going as long as they have — let alone beyond the next couple of contests in South Carolina and Florida. …

The prospect that these candidates could carry on is a testament to the new world of campaign money ushered in by a pair of federal court rulings in 2010: A single wealthy donor can now prop up a presidential campaign with unlimited cash, even if the candidate is getting little traction with voters.

That’s laughable coming from Politico, who went pure Super PAC on Herman Cain to take him out and have participated with the rest of the MSM in giving Jon Huntsman more lives than a cat. But this is the kind of anti-Super PAC talk that’s currently picking up steam throughout the MSM and, naturally, what you read between the lines is the tsk-tsk of disapproval.

Of course the MSM hates Super PACs. Why wouldn’t they? But that hatred has nothing to do with any kind of principle. And if it does, that principle is wildly hypocritical coming from super-funded news outlets working as hard as any Super PAC to influence election outcomes. But the real reason the MSM hates Super PACS is because Super PACs are in direct competition with the MSM to control the political narative of the 2012 election season.

In general, the MSM hates unlimited free speech given to anyone other than them, because it interferes with their political agenda.

Listen, I’m not saying Super PACs are the ideal, but having them is better than not having them, and any organization that declares its biases upfront holds the moral high ground over every aspect of the mainstream media.

The less power the media has over the political narrative in this country, the better off this country will be.

God bless the Super PAC.