Watching Campbell Brown against my will (my girlfriend is a closet conservative), she was saying how Obama had “Broken his promise” with regards to running his campaign using public financing. Now, skipping over all of the things McCain has changed his mind on (from using his experience as a POW to changing his mind about bailing out homeowners, just to name a few), the realization hit me. McCain is a secret socialist. You know, in the same way that Obama is a secret Muslim?
Looking over how public financing actually works,(http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/pubfund.shtml#anchor684182), it is difficult not to notice that this is using money from the Federal government (though given voluntarily) to run the election, and however noble in intent, this is essentially socialism for a campaign. I just can’t stand it, they keep accusing Obama of being the socialist/communist/lucifer/robin hood/whatever-the-f**k, and all the while, the GOP candidate seems more than free to either propose or use any socialist idea that suits his needs, and no one seems to notice.
But the fact that McCain is a secret socialist is besides the point, in that Campbell Brown was attacking Obama, if only she had bothered to look up Obama’s statements regarding the agreement on public financing, she would not seem so ignorant.
Excerpts from http://robotpirateninja.com/2008/10/29/campbell-browns-bullshit-on-obama-fundraising-and-rpn-on-false-equivalency/
Asked last September on a questionnaire from the Midwest Democracy Network whether he would “participate in the presidential public financing system” if his “major opponents agree to forgo private funding in the general election campaign,” Obama checked the box marked “yes,” then outlined his vision for the 2008 contest.
“In February 2007, I proposed a novel way to preserve the strength of the public financing system in the 2008 election,” he wrote. “My plan requires both major party candidates to agree on a fundraising truce, return excess money from donors, and stay within the public financing system for the general election... If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.”
But Campbell Brown can’t be expected to actually go and read things, there is no time for that, as she is too busy… well, I am sure she is busy doing something. For if she did bother to actually investigate, she might have found the following.
At a meeting in Indianapolis on May 2, “top [Obama] fundraisers… asked his campaign donors to refrain from contributing to liberal independent political organizations in hopes of controlling the tone and message of the general-election campaign.”
Meanwhile, McCain has adopted a hands-off stance, telling the Boston Herald earlier this month that he “can’t be a referee of every spot run on television.” The truth is, neither candidate can control what 527s do on their behalf; the groups simply don’t have to answer to federal or state political finance committees.
[source, from a longer article that covers the same question, which Campbell ignored]
So as Obama had hoped to rein in some of the negative ads that had plagued earlier campaigns, McCain backed away, and pretended that he had no way of controlling what the 527 ads were going to be doing, which is actually a bit worrisome in that he cannot control the people trying to help him. A secret socialist that can’t stop his friends, makes you wonder just how terrible a President he would make.
