The Front [Democrats Illegally Funneling "Soft Money" Into Campaigns?]

November 25, 2003 -- THE Democratic Party is being replaced by a new group called "Americans Coming Together," which has been launched with two $10 million donations from financier George Soros and Peter B. Lewis, chairman of the Progressive Corporation. The new organization wants to raise $94 million to finance a massive campaign against Bush - all with soft money. The Democratic Party, which is only allowed to raise hard money (donations limited to $2,000 per person) by the McCain-Feingold law is unable to amass the resources necessary for a national campaign, so it is ceding the main role to Americans Coming Together.

Dick Morris, a man who's seen a few election campaigns, breaks down how Democrats have been violating the soft money campaign limits they pushed so hard for in McCain-Feingold. Tasty Manatees commented a few weeks ago on the way one group, MoveOn.org, appears to be blatantly violating the ban on soft money use in campaigns. It appears that this strategy is not isolated.

Tasty Manatees

But it turns out that Republicans are raising twice as much as Democrats are in hard money.... So the Democrats have resorted to a loophole in McCain-Feingold and worked to maximize soft money contributions to phony political committees, allegedly independent of the party apparatus and thus not covered by the soft money ban. The Democrats have always found hard money hard to come by.... This latest shift is not a case of matching a Republican move.... It is hypocrisy, plain and simple. Americans Coming Together, a supposedly independent campaign committee, is reportedly one-third of the way toward its fund-raising goal. Its nominal independence from the Democratic Party, required by McCain-Feingold, is paper-thin.

It looks like McCain was hoodwinked again. Sitting out the Vietnam War in the Hanoi Hilton did not a master tactician make -- and that's the charitable interpretation.

Truth be known, the passing of complex campaign finance laws that are easily circumvented, then administered unevenly and indeed unfairly, invites disrespect for the system and the politicians that play with it for their own gain, usually as incumbents.

Much to be preferred is the First Amendment precept of our Founders Fathers: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech."

It comes as no surprise that McCain, Feingold and their Democrat allies were neither historians nor constitutional scholars, but let there be no doubt that they working for their own self-interest and against the public interest.

Hypocrisy in American politics at least provides material for humor. How else are we to view the attempts of Democratic Party leaders to circumvent the McCain-Feingold prohibition on the use of soft money in campaigns after their party insisted on its inclusion in the bill?

This goes beyond hypocrisy--its illegal. But it won't be seen as either humorous, hypocritical, or illegal by the liberal media who will totally ignore this circumvention of campaign laws by the very Dems who insisted on it.

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