Fred Wertheimer Challenges Call by RNC Chairman Priebus to Allow Unlimited Contributions to Political Parties

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus’s call today to allow political parties to accept unlimited contributions from corporations, wealthy individuals and special interest groups to finance nominating conventions is a call for greater corruption of our political system.

Unlimited contributions to candidates and parties creates an “inherent” corrupt system as found by the Supreme Court in the landmark case of Buckley v. Valeo.

First Republican leaders call for the repeal of the public funding that has helped pay since 1976 for the Republican and Democratic presidential nominating conventions.  Then with repeal in sight, the RNC Chairman complains that they won’t have enough money to pay for the conventions and asks to solve this phony “problem” by restoring the corrupt unlimited contributions Congress banned in 2002.

This calls to mind the old joke about the person who killed their parents and then asked for sympathy because they were an orphan.

The campaign finance system has enough serious problems already without greatly increasing the potential for government corruption by allowing officeholders to raise and influence-seeking donors to give huge, unlimited contributions to the political parties.

Priebus’s statement today is nothing less than the “theatre of the absurd.”