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After what has seemed a lifetime of political posturing, soundbites, stump speeches and consequently, very little actual policy debate, the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary are within reach.



On 1 February, voters in Iowa’s 1,681 precincts will attend conventions across the state to elect delegates. In advance of this first round of voting in the 2016 presidential campaign, Republican candidates sparred at the sixth GOP debate on 14 January in South Carolina.

There were few surprises, a lot of circular politics and some personal affronts.

Junior Senator from Texas Ted Cruz characterized billionaire frontrunner Donald Trump as embodying “New York values,” code for too liberal and/or too ethnic. Of course, Donald Trump presumably has no values, just bigotry. Some of his campaign proposals include banning Muslims from entering the United States and building an enormous wall to keep South and Central Americans from reaching the United States. Trump also insulted a room full of Jews in December at a meeting of the Republican Jewish Committee board members, asking “Is there anyone in this room who doesn’t negotiate deals? Probably more than any room I’ve ever spoken,” Trump said, trotting out the old offensive stereotype that Jews are only good with money.

Cruz quickly apologized in remarks to reporters as well as on the Sean Hannity radio show.

The political discourse--especially of the Republican party--is raucous and lacks substance. But as non-profit organization Represent.Us illustrates in a graph showing the exponential increase in presidential campaign costs since 1908, U.S. political debate is really a sideshow to the actual election, which is run by big money.

The graph shows a dramatic shift around the 1990s. Where total presidential election spending floated under $0.5 billion between 1908 and the early 1990s, it began rising in the late ‘90s, and since the 2000s it has risen to $2 billion and counting.

Since the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court decision in 2009, which assumed proliferation of money in politics would not lead to corruption because the money would be independent from candidates (in the form of PACs or Political Action Committees), corporations have been free to spend unlimited funds in order to influence political races.



And so, the top 100 super PAC donors spent nearly as much as the combined total of contributions to candidates by every small donor.

Both Republicans and Democrats are recipients of the endless cashflow. As OpenSecrets shows, Florida governor and GOP candidate Jeb Bush has thus far received $103,222,384 in outside money; Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has received $20,291,679.

Ted Cruz’s stockpile of outside money stands at $38,655,257; and the only reason Donald Trump’s outside money number is low is because the billionaire is bankrolling his own campaign.

Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders is only accepting small donor contributions, and that said, has raised a significant $41,463,784.

But there is no question money has corrupted the political spectrum. Candidates fly around the country securing donations from billionaires--think Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson. The Koch brothers are inexplicably tied in with big oil and Sheldon Adelson is an ardent supporter of Israel’s ultranationalist, rightwing politics (he owns Israel Hayom, basically a talk-piece for prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu).

The 1% did not get rich with benevolence and so, it can be assumed, their interest in politics is not out of the spirit of charity, but the spirit of getting richer.