Cheers for Mitt. Tears for Teddy

While the supporters of Mitt Romney are cheering the results of the Iowa Caucuses, somewhere on the right aisle of heaven, a man with a preposterous mustache has a tear in his eye and is gloomily humming his own version of “Look What They’ve Done With My Song Ma”.

During his second term, President Theodore Roosevelt spoke with alarm about the ability of corporate and financial elite — "malefactors of great wealth" — to steer government decisions. In 1907, he signed legislation banning corporate contributions to federal candidates.

In future decades — including during Richard Nixon's presidency — Congress expanded campaign regulation, requiring disclosure of contributions and limiting the size of donations in federal races. Those restrictions have unraveled since the high court's Citizens United decision.

One result of the Citizens United decision could be witnessed on Iowa television in recent months in a series of attack ads on the state’s frontrunner Newt Gingrich. The ads were part of an unprecedented $3.3 million negative campaign of television spots and direct mail by Restore Our Future, an independent expenditure-only committee or super PAC, which destroyed Gingrich's support and was the main ingredient in an Iowa victory for Romney.

The 2012 Iowa caucus was not about the individuals running. Campaign finance observers have warned repeatedly that independent groups, enabled by the Supreme Court's January 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission to raise and spend unlimited sums, would alter the balance of campaigns, once run primarily by candidate committees and party organizations. So far, those warnings are looking prescient.

As evidenced in Iowa, campaigns now operate as political parties of one. Candidates with enough financing can lay their own groundwork for voter mobilization efforts and remain positive, while a supportive super PAC runs negative ads beating off opponents. Voter mobilization and opponent attacks were roles traditionally reserved for the party organizations in the general election, but thanks to Citizens United and the birth of super PACs, each individual candidate can now operate in this fashion.

This time around, independent groups have come to dominate not just the Iowa contest but the entire Republican primary season. According to a Huffington Post analysis of independent expenditures so far this electoral season, super PACs have combined to spend $11 million in the Republican primaries, at least $5.8 million of that in Iowa alone.