Mimsy Were the Borogoves

Editorials: Where I rant to the wall about politics. And sometimes the wall rants back.

McCain sees the light: campaign finance reform dead

Jerry Stratton, March 29, 2009

From the Washington Times, McCain realizes that many of the campaign finance reforms he championed are dead:

“No Republican in his or her right mind is going to agree to public financing. I mean, that’s dead. That is over. The last candidate for president of the United States from a major party that will take public financing was me,” the Arizona Republican told The Washington Times.

Most of us recognized that during the campaign. I do tend to agree with the first commenter:

McCain’s major failure during the campaign was that he took his opponent at his word. Call it a Pollyanna attitude, but the man is from an earlier age when someone’s word actually meant something.

The problem is that those laws still exist, waiting to be used as a weapon against someone the mass media doesn’t like. Imagine if, for example, Sarah Palin ran for president in 2012 and turned off basic credit card security on her web site like the Obama campaign did. It’s very likely that campaign finance reform would suddenly become relevant again in the eyes of the mass media. And the mass media would provide an Obama administration with the cover it would need to prosecute during the election campaign.

McCain’s also pointing out that Obama has completely jettisoned his promises to act in a bipartisan manner when elected, locking Republicans out of any discussion of the massive spending bills going through congress. I think bipartisanship is over-rated; it was the interests of bipartisanship that kept the Republicans from making any noise when Democrats refused to look at the problems of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac and unrestricted lending. It was bipartisanship that got the first TARP bill passed, the one that supposedly was just for revaluing bad mortgage securities and turned out to be a way of spending billions to prop up failed companies.

  1. <- AIG healthcare
  2. Laundering Votes ->