Independent Expenditures

Everyone's favorite punching bag, Karl Rove, recently spoke about a number of topics while at a breakfast during the GOP convention.  The one thing that I think was interesting was his take on independent campaign expenditures.

Rove, who is heading the powerhouse outside spending group Crossroads GPS, defended the use of outside money in elections.

“The Democrats have been doing it for years and I got sick and tired of fighting with one hand behind my back,” he said. “I don’t remember this angst when Americans Coming Together, funded George Soros and five of his pals, were beating up Bush.

I don’t remember anybody writing a frantic editorial in the pages of the New York Times when the NAACP voter fund announced it received a $14 million contribution form an anonymous donor in order to run an ad attacking President Bush as a racial bigot.”

That's really the problem these days, isn't it?  The GOP is fine with anything the GOP does but screams bloody murder if the Dems try anything similar.  The reverse is equally true.

Mr. Rove had some other thoughts that are worth your time as well.

Uniting Citizens

The discussion about funding political campaigns and the recent Citizen's United case contains a couple of important myths.

Myth 1:  The Citizen's United case invalidated the reporting requirement for political contributions.

Those requirements are still in place.

Myth 2:  The Citizen's United case unleased wealthy individuals to give unlimited amounts of money to political groups/campaigns.

Truth:  The Citizen's United case let corporations give unlimited amounts of money to political causes.  That is new.  And I'm not convinced that it is good.

But we ought to have a national discussion that is based on the facts.  Not the myths.

Corruption In The Eye Of The Beholder...

Mr. Obama is apparently trying to score some points with his base over political campaign financing.  He is attempting to say that the US Chamber of Commerce is funneling foreign funds into domestic campaigns. 

He's wrong on that count, which isn't surprising.

However, if he really was interested in preventing foreign contributions in US campaigns, perhaps in 2008 he should have directed that his campaign not remove the standard name-address-account number verification used for most credit card payments.  By removing that safety feature from his campaign's online fund-raising feature, Mr. Obama created a wide open hole through which foreign funds were free to flow.

Into his campaign coffers.

I guess that makes all the difference.