The Best Free Speech Money Can Buy

This is how our politics works in the post-Citizens United era:  super wealthy casino mogul Sheldon Adelson spent $92 million on the GOP in 2012 and feels he is entitled to purchase the Republican candidate (and President) in 2016.  As such, Republican hopefuls flocked to kiss his ring this weekend as he hosts the Republican Jewish Coalition's annual convention.

Several prospective Republican presidential candidates have gathered in Las Vegas for the opening round of what has been dubbed “the Sheldon Primary,” an event emblematic of how warped the system for financing presidential elections has become.

The Sheldon Primary is named for Sheldon Adelson, the wealthy casino owner who, with his wife, poured more than $92 million into the 2012 elections. Despite all that money, Adelson made some bad bets in the last election, first on former House speaker Newt Gingrich to win the Republican nomination and then on Mitt Romney to defeat President Obama in the general election.

He is now looking toward 2016 with a fresh eye, determined, according to The Post’s Matea Gold and Philip Rucker, to find a non-extremist candidate who can actually win the presidency. Those who are looking at running would be happy to have that kind of financial support. Some of them have come to Las Vegas on Friday for a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition, but also to meet privately with Adelson.

Adelson has become a symbol of the new system of financing presidential elections. He and others play under legal rules. But this new financing structure has had a corrosive effect on public confidence in government and politicians. It is why so many Americans feel shut out of the process.

One trained seal barking for cash this weekend at So You Want To Be President is Ohio's own governor, John Kasich.

Gov. John Kasich can say all he wants that he isn’t interested in running for president. Yet here he is this weekend, along with a few others whose national ambitions are far less ambiguous, rubbing elbows with top donors.

Kasich delivered the luncheon keynote Saturday at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s spring conference, held at casino mogul Sheldon Adelson’s opulent spread on the strip.

“All the things we believe in? They work,” Kasich told a ballroom crowd of about 300.

They're all here, because Adelson owns every single one of them.

Besides Kasich, the list of Saturday speakers included New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and John Bolton, the former United Nations ambassador.

Jeb Bush the former governor of Florida, headlined a private dinner for upper-level RJC donors Thursday evening. And former Vice President Dick Cheney will speak Saturday evening over dinner. There are plenty of other faces familiar to political junkies, too, including Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary under President George W. Bush.

All of them are auditioning to Adelson.  What GOP voters actually want, Adelson will tell them.  $100 million is chump change to a guy worth tens of billions.