Obama vs. Boehner: Campaign finance ruling and Massachusetts election

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President Obama, who will deliver his State of the Union address next week, and House Minority Leader John Boehner, delivering today a pre-buttal to that address, are torn over the implications of two far-reaching rulings handed down this week.

One is the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision to lift a century-old limit on corporate spending in political campaigns. The president, decrying the ruling as the opening of ‘floodgates’ for special interests that will drown out the voices of the people, vows in his weekly address today to find a legislative way to remedy the situation. Boehner hailed the court’s ruling as a recognition of the fundamental rights of free speech.

The other is the special election in Massachusetts that handed the Senate seat of the late and long-serving Edward M. Kennedy, a champion of healthcare reform, to Republican state Sen. Scott Brown, who ran with a promise to block that reform in Washington. Brown, who will become the 41st vote in a Republican minority sufficient to block any action in the Senate, has declared Obama’s health plan dead on arrival. Boehner hails Brown’s victory as nothing short of a ‘rebellion’’ that has brewed for months.

Read more in The Swamp.

-- Mark Silva