Reminder ahead of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration’s markup of the For the People Act (S. 1) tomorrow: Republicans will try every trick in the book to delay and divert attention away from the bill they have admitted is too popular to defeat.
The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer broke news of a secret meeting and leaked a recording of it in a report back in March. The report dives into a call between Senator Mitch McConnell’s policy adviser and conservative dark money groups, including one funded by GOP mega-donor Charles Koch, revealing that their own polling has found that voters across the political spectrum, including Republicans, overwhelmingly favor the reforms in the For the People Act, and that their best strategy was to deliberately ignore the will of the American people and use shady “under the dome” strategies to oppose the bill.
These right-wing operatives were particularly frustrated by the widespread popularity––even among Republicans and Independents––of the campaign finance reform provisions in the bill. They were beside themselves that even Republican voters don’t want billionaires buying elections. So buckle up, and get ready for unserious and untrue antics from Republicans during the markup in a desperate attempt to protect their dark money and corporate interest friends.
A recent poll, commissioned by End Citizens United // Let America Vote Action Fund and National Democratic Redistricting Committee, conducted by Global Strategy Group and ALG Research, found the same results––83 percent of Americans, including three quarters of Republicans, support the For the People Act.
Click here to read Jane Mayer’s full article in The New Yorker.
Rachel Maddow: “Let me just ask you if this is their MO. If this is the type of call, the type of research that these groups generally do. The type of message testing that they do when they set out on a new political objective?”
Jane Mayer: “Absolutely. This is the complete playbook. I mean, you have to understand that these groups are funded by some of the wealthiest people in the country. Billionaires… They tried testing against a bill where the other argument was it will stop billionaires from buying elections. Billionaires like themselves. And they could not find an argument that convinced the public that it was the better thing for the billionaires to be buying the elections––that included not just liberal Democrats or event moderates but amazingly, it also included conservatives––who it also turns out don’t really want billionaires buying American elections.”
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