ZadPolBlog

Sunday, July 06, 2008

What's the deal with public financing

So, Obama has turned down $80M of taxpayer money in order to finance his own campaign though supporter donations. This allows him to raise money from individual donors, which is expected to be much more than that amount. This most certainly sounds like a logical move, it’s very simple math.

Desperate to find an issue to smear Obama with, the McCain campaign is attempting to portray this differently. McCain is calling Obama “disgraceful” and “a liar” for not accepting taxpayer money for his campaign. There are three major problems with this latest character assassination attempt from the McCain camp.

First, just because they say over and over that Obama solemnly swore to accept public financing does not make it true. The truth is that such a declaration never happened, and therefore the neocons have been unable to produce any audio, video, document – anything to back up their claim. Of course, just like “Iraq = 9/11”, the neocon tactic is to repeat their false claim over and over and over, until it somehow becomes believed.

Second, the GOP has previously railed AGAINST public financing of elections, because they do not want any spending caps on elections, preferring to allow big-money donors to maximize their influence in elections. Now that there’s a new talking point to hammer, however, all of a sudden they’ve become advocates for public financing of elections. Well, that’s just typical hypocrisy from the right.

Third, McCain has NOT turned down the UNLIMITED and UNREGULATED money that they will receive from the Republican National Committee and the PAC organizations that receive anonymous and uncapped funding from big-money interests. McCain wants to portray Obama as unethical because Obama won’t limit his campaign spending to $80M, while McCain rakes in hundreds of millions from the special interests. That most certainly does not pass “the smell test”.

So, once again, lacking an issue of substance to campaign on, the neocons are resorting to their old tricks. Hopefully everyone will see it for what it is…

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