Now we’ve done it. When Holly opened up her can of Obama® brand worms yesterday, she invited our readers of the left-leaning persuasion (of which, I must admit, my wife is one…) to “help us keep Deceiver nonpartisan” and let us know if John McCain does anything hypocritical. Since the topic du jour was campaign finance, we got quite a few reminders that McCain himself had once pledged, like Obama, to accept taxpayer-subsidized campaign “matching funds” in exchange for limiting the amount of “private” money he would raise and spend in pursuit of the White House.
Fair-minded guy that I am, I decided to look into it. And what I found reminded me of something that should be obvious to everyone by now: Nobody in Washington, DC really deserves to wear the white hats, at least not consistently.
This post is a bit long, and yes, it’s a civics lesson. But you’re gonna love it.
John McCain’s Republican primary campaign was eligible for the matching funds pretty early in the process. Last August, in fact. As National Public Radio tells it: “The Federal Election Commission approved the application, but McCain never cashed in his certificates.” In February, McCain told the Commission that he had no plans to take any taxpayer dollars. In other words, he opted out. (Just like Howard Dean did in 2004, incidentally…)
This is where it gets interesting. It turns out that you can’t just notify the FEC of your intention to “withdraw” from the public system of election financing. They have to rubber-stamp your request in order to make it official. But in February, when McCain sent his official notice, the FEC was powerless to ink its rubber stamp.
Why? Because it lacked enough Commissioners to form a “quorum.” There were so many vacancies on the Commission that it was literally impotent. That didn’t change when the Democratic National Committee filed a formal complaint against McCain in February, or when the DNC sued in Federal court in April, or when a judge dismissed the case in May. Without a quorum, the Federal Election Commission simply couldn’t make a ruling on whether or not to let John McCain “opt out.” And that will probably still be the case next week, when the DNC says it will sue again.
So why, you may ask, does the FEC lack enough Commissioners to do anything useful? Good question.
Last year, President “W” nominated four new Commissioners to fill the vacancies. (There are only six seats, folks, and four are empty.) By law, half of the Commissioners have to be Democrats, and half Republicans. So he nominated two of each. Traditionally, the U.S. Senate has voted to confirm these nominations as a group — all at once — because it would be messy to guarantee the required 50-50 balance if anyone objected to just one of the nominations.
Except this time, two Senators decided to place a “hold” on just one nominee, effectively stalling the whole process indefinitely.
Guess who one of those Senators was?
Depending on whom you ask, the nominee in question was either a redistricting strategist bent on denying voting rights to minorities or a soft-spoken lawyer with strong feelings about prohibiting felons (regardless of their race), and people with no identification, from voting. Regardless, if John McCain looks like a campaign-finance hypocrite now, it may be because Barack Obama wanted to build his civil-rights street cred a year ago.
Here’s a good summary of the Obama maneuver from Politico.
We’re still eager to hear about how John McCain is a hypocrite. Just make it stick this time, m’kay?
Obama is smarter than McCain and Bush. He is better than the lame ass Bush I’ve dealt with in the past eight years. However, Obama is sneaky. So maybe that helps with dealing North Korea and Iraq.
And just to clarify something. Mr. Sleepyhead is a Texan. George Bush is from New Haven, Connecticut and was not born in this state. He couldn’t make bisquits and gravy if he ate a dozen Taco Bell Beef Burritos and took a dump on the front yard. The man is a mindless idiot with a junior college degree. I pity Laura. Mom and Dad are probably going “George, STFU.”
I look forward to all the Texas bitch slapping comments. I’ll man up and enjoy them. He’s not a Texan so we all suffer.
That post was a saucerful of awesome. Thanks.
Just goes to show that all politicians are slimey. Yes, even The One™.
Wow. Y’know the more I learn about Obama, the more I realize how much of a fantastic politician (again, no change there) he is. This man knows the system and can work it. I think I’m talking about the next President here. It’s just going to be good to see if the Clintons are over (maybe since a lot of the people Obama is grabbing seem to be CLinton hold overs) or if they will re-group. And man, once the world gets a hold of this guy, it’s going to be interesting to see how the world’s opinion of the U.S. changes.
He couldn’t make bisquits and gravy if he ate a dozen Taco Bell Beef Burritos and took a dump on the front yard.
… uhm … can anyone do that?
Please don’t demonstrate!
Man, I can’t wait either for world opinion to change about us. It’s, like, OMG, the most important thing for everyone to like us. Like, I can’t sleep at night knowing the Syrians, Lybians, French, Russians, North Koreans etc don’t like the US. I guess I can take comfort in knowing the Polish, the Armenian, the Eastern European countries in general like us but, like, you know, I want everybody to like me!
I can’t wait for higher gas prices, higher taxes, less national defense, weaker military, my drained 401k, being forced to take gov’t healthcare, and paying others so they don’t have to work just so we can be on the same level as the rest of the world. I hope they still won’t be mad at us.
It’s never quite as simple as it seems, is it? I’m not a huge fan of Obama, but if he was objecting to a ‘group confirmation’ over the nomination of a particularly controversial individual, there’s a simple solution: have separate votes. And in fact, it’s been tried (http://tinyurl.com/48pscv).
“As I noted yesterday, the White House offered a “compromise” to the FEC deadlock — except that they refused to withdraw the centerpiece of the conflict, Hans von Spakovsky. Oh, and the offer also included replacing the sitting Republican commissioner David Mason, who’s been creating trouble for the McCain campaign. The only aspect of the offer that could be characterized as a compromise was the promise from White House officials that Senate Republicans would now agree to have a vote on Spakovsky separately from the other uncontroversial FEC nominees.
But now Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says they won’t. It’s either a vote on all the nominees together or nothing. So… no progress has been made. The FEC will remain shut down.”
Was Obama’s stand just a cheap attempt to “bolster his civil rights cred?” Could be, but what it boils down to is that the McCain campaign has done the exact same thing (http://tinyurl.com/5ans64) Obama did– said they’d take the money when the candidate looked like a longshot, then reversed course when he was on top.
It was sleazy of Obama to try and make his own flip sound like his moral duty, but just embarrassing to hear McCain’s campaign announce that they were shocked– shocked!– to hear that a candidate could even conceive of such an underhanded ploy.
Maybe you should just stick to celebrities. Moving into politics is just too disheartening.
Is anyone surprised at this?? Come on guys we see this same crap every 4 years. Lies upon lies upon lies.
I do have to disagree with a few about Obama though, the man is a bucket with no bottom. he can’t hold water on any of his promises. Too many times when you take him off the teleprompter he makes George Bush seem like Einstein with his fumbling words and inaccurate analogies.
Oh and Hurricane, QTF buddy, you know your stuff.
You missed a critical detail on McCain’s maneuvering during the primaries. He used the promise of matching funds from opting in to secure loans. That is against the rules, regardless of his legal opinion to the contrary. Once you use the public finance system to your advantage (cash a dollar of it or secure loans with the promise of opting back in), you cannot withdraw.
I honestly wasn’t sure about that. And other candidates apparently have done similar things, yet were released from their responsibilities.
The bottom line is that the FEC is the panel that decides such things. But they can’t.
Oops.
What this article ignores is that it was McCain, working with democrat Sen. Russ Feingold to make campaign finance reform legislation back when the far right were calling him a maverick and the dems respected him. (The dems no longer respect him because they realize there’s a chance people might see McCain as a centrist and he’ll take the election). Obama supported the legislation as well, and promised months ago to accept public financing….until he decided a few days ago that the system he so recently applauded is “broken” since he can get much more money without it. Sleazy to no end.
matt sandwich and kl make excellent points.
and matt’s last sentence is a good one: you’ve made a very weak attempt at trying to appear neutral and unbiased, when you guys are obviously right-wing. perhaps you should stay out of politics and keep to celebrities.
in case i wasn’t clear above, i mean that you’ve consistently shown yourselves to be right-wing - not just in this post.
Oh, please … Don’t even go there.
I think right now the political lefties are just giving us more grist for the mill because they tend to set themselves up for greater levels of failure when their naked idealism, early in the campaign season, doesn’t mesh with reality. The right wing, on the other hand, will have its share of horribly embarassing moments later in the season, when its inability to live up to its own moral high standards becomes painfully clear.
At least that’s the way it usually plays out.
In other words: It’s early, folks. Be patient. And by all means, send us dirt on the “Right.” Better yet, draft us a few well-worded paragraphs. We just might run them verbatim. We have no shame.
The fact that the government cannot operate according to its own rules under a two-term GOP administration should be impetus enough to not repeat the same actions and expect different results. Remember when gas was a dollar and a half? Remember when the budget was balanced and the economy was good? Remember when you could pretend that your vote was counted? Or that the thought that the phone company was using supercomputers to monitor all your calls and email would put you in the tin foil hat brigade and not be the reason for your congressman to get a lot of extra lobbyist money while the phone companies try to deny they broke the law for the current president?
Anybody remember when there was a real opposition party and not just two flavors of hookers servicing big business?
Hye, Hurricane? The sarcasm in your comment really wasn’t very good. I’m 16 and even I wasn’t impressed.