Ed Markey: taking that sweet, sweet slaveholder money!

…Well, it logically follows, right?

Rep. Ed Markey on Tuesday compared the Supreme Court’s Citizens United campaign finance decision to the 1858 Dred Scott decision upholding slavery during a campaign speech in Pittsfield, Mass.

[snip]

Citizens United […] is a 2010 high court decision gutting much of the McCain Feingold campaign finance law limiting the ability of corporations to spend money on campaigns. The ruling paved the way for the host of Super PACs that spent tens of millions of dollars in the 2012 campaign.

Just one little wrinkle to that stance:

Markey has accepted more than $2.5 million in contributions from corporate and other PACs during his career, according to opensecrets.org.

And you know that he’s gonna take more for the MA Senate special election.  Much, much more.  But I’m sure that that dirty corporate money is all right.

Moe Lane

PS: Yes, I know that it takes a certain amount of chutzpah for a Democrat to use Dred Scott v. Sandford in his or her campaign rhetoric.  But, to be fair: we have no way of knowing whether Ed Markey is actually well-educated enough to appreciate the irony.

PS: This via @davidhauptmann.  Note that Buzzfeed itself is a little amazed at the double standard implicit in a Democrat getting away with comparing a case reestablishing of basic Constitutional rights (Citizens’ United) to a case denying of them (Dred Scott).  As a good general rule: if you’re a Democrat and Buzzfeed is calling you on something, then you’ve messed up significantly.  …Or else Buzzfeed wants somebody else to get the Democratic Senate nomination in Massachusetts.