More on McCain
A little while ago, I posted about CFIF’s new $traight Talk blog, exposing John McCain’s hypocrisy and anti-freedom agenda.
As usual, I overlooked the best item on the site.
In a letter to Senator McCain, CFIF demands that the Senator answer a simple question:
As a frontrunner for the 2008 Republican nomination for President, will you campaign within the presidential public financing system or is it your intention to abandon the limitations of that system in favor of more campaign dollars?
McCain took public money during his 2000 campaign, but with seemingly everyone else opting out, will he do so as well?
It’s a critical question. McCain has built his entire political persona around limiting speech under the guise of campaign finance reform. The public funding system for Presidential campaigns is the marquis element of our current campaign finance scheme. If McCain repudiates it, he’s sending a clear message.
He’s also confirming to the world that while he’s glad to make the rules for everyone else, he doesn’t think they should apply to the Great McCain.
Jim: Regarding McCain, this is a little off the topic of public financing, but I think it’s worth spelling out… I tried explaining to a McCain supporter why this issue (his establishment of McCain-Feingold, and various other measures intending to “get money out of politics” by restricting your right to use your money to promote a political message near an election) is such a deal-breaker, or near-deal-breaker for so many conservatives.
I presume our readers are familiar with the legal actions taken against Seattle-based talk show host Kirby Wilbur. He strongly opposed a hike in Washington state’s gas tax; he supported a referendum opposing it; pro-gas tax folks filed suits charging that his daily drum-beating for the referendum constituted an in-kind donation to the referendum’s cause. In an appalling decision, Washington state’s courts have so far supported the concept that Wilbur’s on-air talk amounted to a cash political donation, and could be regulated and restricted.
Under the pre-McCain-Feingold days, the belief was that money was the same as speech; because we couldn’t limit speech, it was unconstitutional to limit money. After the Supreme Court’s approval of McCain-Feingold, and the belief that money is not the same as speech, it opened the door that money – in terms of both donations and independent expenditures’ — could be regulated.
Now speech is being defined as the same as money again, and because money can be regulated, so can speech.
I’m sure you see where this is going. If Kirby Wilbur’s comments are an in-kind donation, what’s a newspaper editorial worth? A column? A diatribe from Sean Hannity on Fox News? A blog post?
I’m sure John McCain had no intention of this when it started. I believe he genuinely wanted to get big money out of politics and build a political system responsive to more than just campaign donors. But he didn’t account for… well, judicial activists, coupled with the fact that some folks in our society are not terribly far from fascism in their eagerness to limit others’ right to speak their mind – witness campus speech codes, political correctness, the Fairness Doctrine, broadly-defined ‘hate speech’ laws that provide civil and criminal penalties for speaking words that offend, etc.
I know that Senator McCain has said, time and again, he doesn’t want to regulate blogs and regulate the media; his creation, forged with the noblest intentions, has clearly been hijacked and is being used in ways he never intended. But I suspect that only the most vehement and full-throated counterattack on the speech restrictionists by the Senator will change many conservative minds. There’s a lot of belief out there that McCain has no use for the conservative press, since he gets glowing coverage from the MSM. But we know that the twisted ideology and legal vindictiveness that went after Kirby Wilbur will never really be used against the New York Times or Esquire magazine or the Daily Show – media entities that have been comparably kind to McCain compared to other Republicans.