So, Where Are All Those Republican 527′s that Scared Obama into Breaking His Promise?
When Barack Obama brazenly broke his promise to try really, really hard to make his campaign a publicly-funded affair, I noted that he invoked largely non-existent Republican 527 groups to justify himself. These are the bete noire of Democrats (even though they use them to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars every election) and have been a reliable bogeyman for a couple few elections now. The New York Times (via Hot Air) took the popular fiction and ran with it in an op-ed today.
The Republican Party is raising a great deal of money, and shadow groups known as 527s have tens of millions to spend. Mr. McCain knows the power of these groups since they slimed him out of the 2000 Republican primaries.
Like I said yesterday, you’d be hard-pressed to find even one serious 527 group carrying any water for John McCain. Unlike the 2004 election, when the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth demolished John Kerry’s phony war hero claims, no one seems to be willing to put themselves on the line for Johnny Mac. The truth is that the folks who would usually put their money up to help a Republican candidate just aren’t interested in helping John McCain. Jonathan Martin of the Politico has found that Obama’s claim is just what I said it was – complete bunk. Republican donors and interest groups aren’t terribly interested in putting themselves on the line for a candidate who is likely to turn on them and savage them for something as basic as exercising their Cosntitutional right of free speech. Obama’s going to have to find some other flimsy rationale to explain why he threw yet another one of his heartfelt principle in the garbage.
And John McCain’s going to have to find a way to win with very, very few friends. It turns out that being openly contemptuous of the First Amendment tends to leave you bereft of enthusiastic supporters in the Republican Party.
Other Posts of Interest:
- NC Repubs to John McCain: You’re Not the Boss of Me!
- Obama’s Better than McCain Because Republicans Will Oppose Obama
- Barack Decides that He Doesn’t Need All His Heartfelt Principles
Category: Free Speech (?), Johnny Mac, The Obamessiah
"And John McCain’s going to have to find a way to win with very, very few friends. It turns out that being openly contemptuous of the First Amendment tends to leave you bereft of enthusiastic supporters in the Republican Party"
To quote John McCain: "…those 'so called First Amendment rights'"
I think a lot of conservative money and voters are staying home this election.
Let's take a moment to sum up: the anti-torture candidate supports torture. The pro-immigration candidate opposes immigration. The candidate who opposes tax cuts for the rich supports them. The pro-campaign finance reform candidate has a campaign that is run almost exclusively by lobbyists, and exploits loopholes in the law to skirt spending limits–even the laws the candidate wrote. The candidate who opposes "agents of intolerance" in the Republican Party embraces them. The candidate with the foreign policy experience frequently confuses Sunnis and Shiites and misreads Iranian influence in the region, but is proposing permanent war. The candidate who claims to be a fiscal conservative wants to bust the budget. The candidate who claims to take global warming seriously does not want to take any serious action to address it.
Fred, again, your facts are wrong.
Are you are dedicated to accuracy as the organization in your domain name?