SCALIA AND BCRA

I'm mulling over some ideas on Scalia's understanding of "the citizenry" [my term, not his] as evidenced by his BCRA dissent. Any thoughts or suggestions would be welcome. I'm intrigued by statements like this:

The premise of the First Amendment is that the American people are neither sheep nor fools, and hence fully capable of considering both the substance of the speech presented to them and its proximate and ultimate source. If that premise is wrong, our democracy has a much greater problem to overcome than merely the influence of amassed wealth.

I'm wondering, in particular, if the suppressed alternative (the people are "sheep or fools") acts as a kind of hidden premise anywhere in the rest of the dissent, or on the general direction of the argument. One should ask, for example, how plausible it in fact is that the people are sheep or fools, according to Scalia. In particular, I wonder how this idea squares with his depiction of voter behavior in the face of negative "attack ads":

Perhaps voters do detest these 30-second spots–though I suspect they detest even more hour-long campaign-debate interruptions of their favorite entertainment programming. Evidently, however, these ads do persuade voters, or else they would not be so routinely used by sophisticated politicians of all parties.

Perhaps there's nothing here, but I'm interested in the cast of characters: sheep, fools, sophisticated politicians, a-political TV watchers. If you've got any thoughts, send them along!