Which is why I said it could get worse.
i don't share your fears...
No, let's be honest what that ruling did. It gave corporations the right to do it. You and I always had the right to say whatever we wanted. McCain-Fiengold was a bad idea, but the ruling is worse.
... not really... corporations an unions were never banned from independent expenditures on all electioneering communications... they were free to spend as much as they wanted on newpapers ads and published media... they were only banned from doing so pertaining to TV and radio, and similar media... which, to me, created a rather arbitrary limit on an existing right.
they had ot do it that way, or else newpapers and print media couldn't be in the business of electioneering ( as they have been since our inception)
you had the odd environment of allowing certain corporations full speech rights ( media), while barring certain ,arbitrary, aspects of other corporations and unions speech rights... it was quite simply, bad, unconstitutional, law... and it never worked as advertised... as evident by the ever increasing amount of electioneering communications and independent expenditures.
And this is where I know you are just reading far too much into my comments. I never once said/implied that speech should be controled. All I said was that negative campaign has the potential to get worse because of the overturn of McCain-Fiengold.
it had the potential to be worse before 2002... why wasn't it worse then?
had it been "better" between the years of 2002 and 2010, i could almost understand why folks have the fears they do... but it wasn't better... negative ads/electioneering expenditures were more prevalent under McCain Fiengold than they were before it...
in any event, i'm ok with negative ads... i have no problem with them overall.
if there are lies and untruths, then we can address them , but there is nothing wrong with negative campaign ads as an institution.