Last week GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney created a bit of stir when he told a crowd, “Corporations are people, my friend.”  Progressives were quick to criticize the claim, claiming that corporations are simply a legal invention and that their profits.  However, Romney stood by the remark and no one else in the Republican field was willing to disagree over the last week.  Conservative commentator Sarah Palin later made a wholehearted endorsement of Romney’s comments.  For a while it seemed that Romney’s position had become the official Republican position, but yesterday Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) became the lone voice in the GOP desert to say that corporations are not, in fact, people.

In the video to the left, Think Progress reporter Scott Keyes asks Paul, “What did you make of Mitt Romney’s statement that ‘corporations are people yesterday?”

The debate is more than just semantics.  In their Citizens United decision the United States Supreme Court declared that corporations have at least some First Amendment rights like that of individuals.  As a result of Citizens United, corporations are now allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money to support or defeat an individual candidate.  Corporations subsequently spent record amounts in the 2010 elections, and are expected to spend even more in 2012.  Giving corporations status as “people” grants them certain rights, and those rights have consequences for the larger population.

With his comments, Paul actually agrees with progressives, though for slightly different reasons.  Progressives are more concerned about the growing influence of corporations on elections, and the large amount of corporate wealth being gathered in a hands of few wealthy individuals while the poor and middle class suffer.  Paul’s stance is more concerned with his libertarian ideology of freedom and individual rights.