Ezra Klein doesn’t believe that limits on the size of campaign contributions will be a panacea for our political woes:
We tend to assume “small donors” hail from that mythical, much-beloved class of people known as “ordinary Americans.” They’re not. Even if tens of millions of Americans are donating, hundreds of millions of other Americans aren’t. The tiny minority that donates is different from the vast majority that doesn’t: They’re much, much more ideologically polarized. What individual donors tend to want, [senator Chris] Murphy [D-CT] said, is partisanship. “When I send out a fundraising e-mail talking about how bad Republicans are, I raise three times as much as when I send out an e-mail talking about how good I am. People are motivated to give based on their fear of the other side rather than on their belief in their side.” …
Just as big money is corrupting, small money is polarizing. And it’s polarization that probably poses the bigger threat to American politics right now. Big money, for example, generally wants to raise the debt ceiling. Small money is one reason Republicans in Congress came close to breaching it.
Mijin Cha pushes back:
Where to start? Well, how about with the most recent election, in which highly ideological big donors played a critical role in moving the GOP to the right — both during the primaries and the general election.
Think of a mega donor like Foster Friess, a hard right Christian conservative, who single-handledly kept Rick Santorum in the race and helped foster a climate in which Mitt Romney tacked right. Or think of the role played by the Club for Growth, which spent over $20 million to help knock off moderate GOP Senate and House candidates in the primaries. Or how about those Koch brothers, the life-long libertarians, who spent tens of millions of dollars in the last election cycle.
One reason the Republican Party finds it so hard to move in a more moderate direction is because deep-pocked groups like the the Club for Growth and NRA threaten to primary any congressional member who steps out of line. It’s these well-financed enforcers that are the main problem, not Michele Bachman’s small donors.
The Dish 