Poll Finds Most Disagree With The Supreme Court Ruling on 'Citizens United.'

SC Justice Samuel Alito could have shook his head more vigorously, while grumbling “not true” even louder at the SOTU Address last month, but it still wouldn’t have been enough to sway popular opinion, as revealed in the findings of a new bipartisan poll conducted by Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, and Republican strategist Mark McKinnon, former “informal advisor” to John McCain during his last bid for the presidency. McKinnon was also former policy advisor for Bush 43, as well as being his media consultant.

Generally speaking, the poll results concluded that most Americans agree with President Obama’s stated concern--voiced during the State of the Union address--in reference to the Citizens United v Federal Elections Commission ruling, a monumental decision made last month in which the Supreme Court gave unlimited speech rights (in the form of green-lighting unlimited money contributions) to corporations with which they can influence political candidates, parties and entire elections. Registered voters participating in the poll expressed opposition to the Supreme Court's ruling by a 2-to-1 ratio, and that opposition was found to be prevalent among voters who claim allegiance to both major political parties, as well as with those who identify themselves as independents.

The findings also reveal something else; a growing wave of discontent felt among voters, which if not given proper attention, could spell major upset in political circles. This sense of disconnect with Washington could be detected throughout the poll results.

When asked if they felt that special interest had too much influence in our governmental process, three fourths of the respondents [74%] said ‘yes.’ Subsequently, when voter participants were asked if they thought members of Congress and the Senate were being “controlled by” groups of big financial backers, an overwhelming majority [79%] responded ‘yes.’ Only 24% felt that they, as ordinary citizens, still had the people’s power of influence over their elected representatives. An even smaller percentile [18%] of voters agreed with the idea that elected officials in Washington actually listen to the voting citizenry more than they do to big financial interests.

Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, the other half of the bipartisan polling team of experts, responded unequivocally. “There’s no doubt about this,” he said in referring to the results. “The last thing people want to see are corporations having a bigger roll in elections.”

Of course, these findings do not bode well for the Democratic Party, who—over the last couple of major election cycles--were overwhelmingly swept into office to affect change in the way things are done in DC. But given the people’s obvious discontent, as revealed by this comprehensive poll; for the Republican Party—a political entity which openly flaunts its traditional identification with Big Business, along with its proclivity toward the tenets of unregulated, laissez-faire Capitalism—this could spell disaster.

All of the above political revelations exposed by this poll give credence and weight to an idea that I’d like to discuss in future posts on this blog. In light of this poll, in the future I would like to rant on the notion that progressives and those who identify themselves with the Tea Party movement have a couple of key points-of-view in common, and that through cooperation on points of commonality, massive ‘movement politics’ could affect the change we all want…but that is for a later post.

I think Thom Hartmann described this situation well, when during a recent newscast he said; “Average Americans know what the right-wing ‘five’ on the Supreme Court are ignoring. When corporations finally take over America…it won’t be America anymore. A corporate-run state, where the money power owns the government and the politicians--which is what the ‘five’ on the Supreme Court just put us on the road to--has been historically referred to as ‘Feudalism’ or ‘Fascism’ (as defined by Mussolini). Think of the British East India Co. in 1776 England. Or Mussolini replacing the members of the Italian Parliament with corporate representatives in the 1930s. He went on to add this; “If we don’t do something fast—probably amending the Constitution to ‘deny corporations personhood’—this country, and the world, could become very authoritarian and very ugly very quickly!”