Furthermore, a candidate who has a lot of money simply screams corruption. For example, if you had to choose between two candidates and only knowing one of them raised 100% of their money from small dollar donations from the people and the other candidate had millions of dollars funneled to them by special interest groups, a political party or PAC or organizations, which candidate would you choose? Probably the first one.
However, there already ARE many candidates throughout our country each and every election cycle that are 100% people funded. The only problem is, they do not get any attention, most of them don’t even make it past the primary election because too many people are not paying attention or don’t even vote. We have too many bought and paid for, corrupt politicians because too many people are simply not paying attention.
It should not matter how much a candidate spends, how many mailers they send out or how many ads they play on TV or radio but unfortunately it does. Spending money buys name recognition and too many vote based on name recognition alone because too many people are not paying attention.
Special interest groups, political action committees, companies, organizations, unions and the like all throw an unfathomable amount of money, multiple BILLIONS of dollars, at candidates just to get them elected, and the two most common questions are: Isn’t it wrong to spend so much money on candidates to get them elected? And. Couldn’t that money be better spent for something good?
The answer to both questions is profoundly, yes!
Yes it is wrong for special interests to spend money on candidates, because we all know they aren’t spending that money out of the kindness of their heart or because they have a hole in their pocket…they want something in return! And candidates and politicians who take that money end up needing to return those favors.
And yes, that money could be better spent on other things just about literally anything else.
Therefore, the only logical solution to get money out of politics is to not find a way to get them to stop being corrupt and stop spending millions of dollars, but to get to a point where it doesn’t matter how much money they spend, or many many mailers they send or how many advertisements they air on the TV or radio.
We the people need to start paying attention once again. We must shake off our apathy, our complacency and get back in the game.
We the people must unite, and not focus on our political differences, but only vote for candidates who are not bought and paid for. Only vote for the candidates who have not taken money from lobbyists and special interest groups. They are out there, they just don’t get anywhere on the campaign trail because we are not paying attention.
We don’t need to ask the corrupt politicians to stop being corrupt. We just need to replace them. That is how we take our power back.
