"There’s only one way to combat the damage Citizens United has inflicted on its own supporters ... accept that there’s a front-runner for the party nomination, who might not be the candidate it’s supporting, and help them win instead."

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Conservatives Starting to Think Obscene Campaign Spending Might Be a Bad Thing
Too much money, and too many candidates.
By Tina Nguyen, July 15, 2015

It might seem impossible that there could be a downside to being a political candidate and having too much money. It was certainly inconceivable to the conservative backers of Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that allowed for unlimited corporate spending in political races. But now that the Republican primary field has at least 15 candidates and counting—and enough super-PAC money to fuel their campaigns for a long, long time—members of the G.O.P. have begun to despair at the creation they hath wrought, an ugly money hydra that will never stop growing more heads and eating more resources, and lowering the chance of fielding a viable candidate with the momentum needed to face down an opponent in the general election.

Currently, there is an obscene amount of money in the G.O.P. presidential primaries—a seriously mind-boggling amount of money, far past the $200 million mark—and a huge percentage of that comes from super-PACs fueling candidates that, in a pre–Citizens United era, would have been considered fringe: as of June 13, Sen. Ted Cruz has a $51 million war chest that is two parts super-PAC money, and one part normal money. Governor Bobby Jindal reportedly has $8 million in private super-PAC money behind him, despite the fact that he will probably never have a chance at winning. And according to Politico, an additional $85 million has been raised for “a handful of second- and third-tier candidates,” including Chris Christie, John Kasich, Carly Fiorina, Rick Perry, and Mike Huckabee. (And that’s just half the field.)

The Republican strategists and consultants who spoke to Politico about the spread of super-PACs, and the billionaire sugar daddies who fund them, openly worried that it would lead to a prolonged battle royale between the candidates, brutal and expensive enough that its winner would limp out of the fray, only to be crushed by their Democrat opponent. “A super PAC for a broadly successful candidate makes them doubly formidable,” former president George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer told Politico. “A super PAC for a marginal candidate keeps them alive. And that’s what’s different now.”

Such a scenario already happened in 2012 to Mitt Romney, who won the G.O.P. primary but not the war:

In that race, Las Vegas casino billionaire and Wyoming mutual fund pioneer Foster Friess almost single-handedly subsidized the long-shot GOP primary campaigns of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, respectively, despite otherwise lackluster campaign organizations and fundraising. The super PAC supporting Gingrich in particular, which was backed by more than $20 million from Adelson’s family, spent heavily on ads attacking the party favorite — and eventual nominee — Mitt Romney as a heartless corporate raider by highlighting his time at the helm of the private equity firm Bain Capital. Republicans bemoaned the attacks, which played into the hands of Democrats. They eagerly picked up the theme when a damaged Romney, his super PAC and campaign coffers depleted from fending off the attacks, limped into the general election against President Barack Obama.

“That did Gov. Romney no favors,” said John Jordan, a California winery owner who in 2014 donated $2.4 million to Republican candidates and groups. “Moreover, the resources that went into supporting a lot of these candidates with lower probability of winning could have been very well spent in the summer providing air cover for Romney, when he was being defined by the Democrats for Bain Capital, etc.,” said Jordan, who last month hosted a super PAC fundraiser for his pick for the 2016 presidential nomination — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

There’s only one way to combat the damage Citizens United has inflicted on its own supporters, and that’s a solution completely antithetical to the purpose of a super-PAC: accept that there’s a front-runner for the party nomination, who might not be the candidate it’s supporting, and help them win instead. “When it becomes clear who the nominee is going to be—even if that person is not perfect or is not our guy or girl—maybe we need to think about whether it’s really worth the damage to the nominee to boost an outside candidate’s chances by 5 percent,” Jordan noted. “Each donor has to look at it that way.”
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