Money and Politics

Recently there has been a bunch of discussion of money and elections sparked, in part, by David Brooks' recent dishonest discussion of non-party adds in the current election cycle. The discussion is now on the effectiveness of money in an election rather than the effect of outside expenditure.  Ed of Ginandtacos agrees and summarizes the academic and other literature thusly:

That said, I have been increasingly interested (in the context of my day job) in the question of what all of this money buys in elections. And the more I reflect upon and study the issue, the more convinced I become that the money would be just as productively used by throwing it on a raging bonfire.

The difficulty with this position is that while spending tons of money in an election on advertising that, for example, rejects the overwhelming evidence of AGW might not get the desired Tea Party Patriot elected, it does legitimize rejecting the overwhelming evidence for AGW part of the national "conversation."  And this, I would argue, is the point.  Even if your candidate isn't elected the terms of the debate shift from X is a problem and which policies best address the X problem to "Is X really a problem?  and, ideally, to the conclusion that all those who support solutions to the non-problem X are really anti-American. At least in this election cycle. Corporations and others throwing bazillions into the bonfire of vanities, as it were, aren't just trying to win the cycle they are trying to and succeeding in framing the debate.