Citizens United 2.0

Last week, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a GOP-backed effort to repeal campaign finance limits on how much money parties can redirect to individual candidates.

This case could expand the court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which overturned generations of anti-corruption campaign finance regulation and opened the floodgates of corporate and billionaire political giving.

The Citizens United decision still kept intact decades-old limits on party-coordinated campaign spending, which the Supreme Court upheld in 2001 in the face of another Republican-led effort against campaign finance limits, in part, because they stop donors from simply circumventing individual giving caps by funneling money through parties.

But now, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and other GOP interests want even these threadbare rules abolished — they claim spending limits “are at war” with the high court’s recent rulings on the First Amendment.

Here are the top standout moments during arguments of a case that could become Citizens United 2.0.

According to those aiming to kill the spending limits, their opponents’ anti-corruption arguments are based on “Rube Goldberg” theories of crime — referencing the famous cartoonist whose machine drawings solved basic problems in the most comedically complex manner possible.

There are, they argue, much easier ways to deliver a bribe through existing campaign finance law.

“A would-be briber would be better off just giving a massive donation to the candidate’s favorite super PAC,” Noel Francisco, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, argued. “Why [donate to party committees] rather than just cutting a million-dollar check directly to the candidate’s favorite super PAC?”

After liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out that recent presidential campaigns have used party-coordinated spending to solicit individual donations far exceeding the $3,500 limit enforced by the Federal Elections…