Listening to money.

• Position: Vox Populist

Congressional Republicans have spent the first two years of the Obama Administration as the rock-solid party of "no," "uh-uh," "no way," "forget about it," "nothing doing," "we're-agin-it-and-we'll-kill-it." This is one reason their job approval rating is lower than that of BP executives.

But now, GOP leaders in the House say they are shifting from pure negativity. Instead, they intend to step forward with their own bold policy ideas.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Terrific!

What are some of those ideas?

"Uh ... um ... well," say the leaders, "we don't know yet, but that's why we've launched an exciting new campaign that we call America Speaking Out. We'll go directly to the grassroots people, asking for their ideas, giving them a voice and letting them shape 'the new Republican agenda.'"

Where are you starting your grassroots campaign?

"Uh ... um ... Washington, D.C."

Only six weeks after America Speaking Out was introduced as "an unprecedented initiative to listen to the American people," the group held its policy-crafting meeting not in town halls in Fargo, Fresno, and Freeport but in the snug confines of House Minority Leader John Boehner's Capitol Hill office. And who were the just-plain-folks that the House GOP leader invited? His emailed solicitation went to just twenty top lobbyists representing big corporations and such business front groups as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. Apparently, this is the bunch that Republican leaders consider to be their real "grassroots" constituency.

Well, sniffed a spokesman, it's important to "receive input" from the nation's largest employers.

Bovine excrement! These corporate lobbyists give their input every day, usually with campaign donations attached. America Speaking Out is just more of the same--listening to the money interests at the top, rather than the workaday majority of Americans who are barely scraping by.

S peaking of corporate campaign spending, the dam was dynamited back in January by the Supreme Court's infamous decision in the Citizens United case, and the deluge is now upon us. By decreeing that corporations are now free to spend unlimited sums of cash from their vast treasuries to elect or defeat anyone they want, the Court is allowing...