Follow the Money Right to the Republicans Who Challenged the Election (Video)

The 42 right-wing Republican senators and House of Representatives members who voted two weeks ago to challenge US election results want us to believe they were standing on principles.

They want the American people to understand there wasn’t an iota of partisan politics involved.

They want us to buy in to the claim they were merely exercising their patriotic duty.

It was them upholding their oath to protect and defend the Constitution.

They were protecting the integrity of our free and fair elections.

That is all pure rubbish, according to an analysis The Guardian conducted.

As data from the Center for Responsive Politics reveals, anti-tax group the “Club for Growth” directly or indirectly funneled about $20 million to Republican lawmakers’ 2018 and 2020 campaign coffers.

About 30 of those lawmakers accepted more than $100,000, including Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and newly sworn-in “QAnon” conspiracy theorist, Rep. Lauren Boebert.

Club for Growth’s biggest funders are Uline shipping supply co-founder Richard Uihlein and Susquehanna International Group co-founder Jeffrey Yass.

Former Republican strategist and anti-Trump group Lincoln Project co-founder, Reed Galen, said:

“Here’s the thing about the hyper wealthy. They believe that their hyper-wealth grants them the ability to not be accountable. And that is not the case. If you’ve made billions of dollars, good on you. But that doesn’t make you any less accountable for funding anti-democratic or authoritarian candidates and movements.”

Galen adds that groups like the Club for Growth pander to Republican donors’ own personal agenda, not “conservative principles”.

The Club for Growth, however, has side-stepped culpability since it puts its funds toward “outside” spending decisions, like attacking candidates’ opponents, not toward Republicans directly.

Susquehanna International Group co-founder Jeffrey Yass is now suggesting Sen. Josh Hawley “deceived” him.

Yass wrote to former stockbroker Laura Goldman:

“Do you think anyone knew Hawley was going to do that [attempt to overturn the election]? Sometimes politicians deceive their donors.”

Yass is a staunch Republican donor, the eighth-largest the last election cycle, who has donated about $30 million to conservative Super Political Action Committees (PACs).

Most of those donations went to the Club for Growth that backed the effort to de-legitimize the electoral college votes on January 6 in which Sen. Hawley participated.

Uline shipping supply co-founder Richard Uihlein, a contributor to the Koch network, gave at least $2 million to get Josh Hawley elected.

He also donated more than $4 million to the “Tea Party Patriots,” one of 11 groups behind the “Stop the Steal” coalition responsible for the assault on the Capitol.

The Guardian adds:

“In 2019, more than $20 million was funneled through DonorsTrust, a donor-advised fund that disguises the source of major giving to nonprofits, to a dozen organizations that would ultimately contest the integrity of the 2020 presidential election, including $103,000 to Tea Party Patriots. In a statement provided to the Intercept, Tea Party Patriots cofounder Jenny Beth Martin denied spending any money on the Stop the Steal rally and condemned the violence that occurred.”

That means there is a straight line stretching from deep-pocketed right-wing donors to the politicians they own, whether or not the money was “intended” to subvert the Electoral College count.

We should point fingers at Sens. Hawley and Cruz.

We should point fingers at the right-wing donors.

But the real problem is money in politics.

Until we have a Supreme Court willing to overturn 1976’s Buckley v. Valeo2014’s McCutcheon v. FECand 2010’s Citizens United decisions, we will continue to have the best democracy money can buy.

The most effective—albeit most arduous—task is passing a constitutional amendment like the pledge the non-profit organization Move to Amend links on its website:

“We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling and other related cases, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.”

A future where “corporate personhood” is again a thing of fiction is possible.

Image credit: Wikipedia

Ted Millar is writer and teacher. His work has been featured in myriad literary journals, including Better Than Starbucks, The Broke Bohemian, Straight Forward Poetry, Caesura, Circle Show, Cactus Heart, Third Wednesday, and The Voices Project. He is also a contributor to The Left Place blog on Substack, and Medium.