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Posted on 07/04/2004 7:03:27 AM PDT by The_Victor
Video and audio courtesy The Associated Press. (Free Real Player required)
Somber images from the Sept. 11 attacks fill the television screen -- twisted steel, then President Bush with his arm draped around a firefighter's shoulders.
"He held us together and began to hunt down terrorist killers. But what if Bush wasn't there?" the announcer asks. "Could John Kerry have shown this leadership? The Kerry who voted against billions for America's intelligence even after the first World Trade Center bombing? The Kerry who voted against 13 weapons systems our troops depend on?"
A Republican-linked group paid for the ad with the kind of unregulated campaign cash that -- until recently -- the GOP had fought hard to outlaw. Months after the Federal Election Commission refused to stop Democrat-affiliated organizations like MoveOn.org from converting multimillion-dollar individual and corporate donations into attack ads, Republicans have decided to imitate them.
Using unregulated soft money donations, independent Democratic groups have been running ads for months that criticize the opposition candidate without specifically asking for a vote. By guiding their own wealthy donors toward a handful of nascent Republican groups such as Progress For America -- which started running the "What if?" anti-Kerry ad in late June -- GOP leaders are making an 11th-hour bid to duplicate the behavior they've called illegal.
Whether they resume the fight after the election to ban so-called 527 groups, experts say, depends largely on one thing: Will 527s help the GOP too?
"If they have any success at all with their own 527s, I doubt they'll continue fighting it," said Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a top watchdog group for campaign finance.
So far, it's slow going for GOP 527s -- named for the tax code section that defines them. Analysts say potential donors are likely confused after hearing party leaders complain about the Democrats' 527 groups, which have raised more than $100 million. Republican organizers concede they won't come close to generating that kind of money before the election.
"Especially after months of hearing Republican leaders describe soft money donations to 527s as illegal," said GOP political consultant Allan Hoffenblum. "It's grass-roots (support) when they're for you. It's `insidious and low and must be stopped' when they're against you."
If anything, the Republican complaint that brought the issue before the Federal Election Commission still stands -- delayed, but not denied. If a political party cannot use large, unregulated donations -- commonly called soft money -- to fund a presidential campaign, the GOP asked, why are independent organizations with overtly partisan agendas allowed to collect multimillion-dollar checks to pay for attack ads on a presidential candidate?
For now, the answer comes from a loophole in the McCain-Feingold Act, the 2002 campaign finance reform law named for its Senate sponsors, John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis.
Independent organizations staffed by die-hard Democrats, the 527s raked in enough money to produce a barrage of anti-Bush advertising in battleground states even before Kerry looked like a viable candidate. And they took huge, unregulated donations from labor unions, corporations and multimillionaires to do it.
The Bush campaign and Republican Party leaders filed a complaint with the FEC, claiming the largely Democratic 527 groups were thumbing their noses at McCain-Feingold. But the FEC was unwilling to make a major change in the rules in the middle of an election cycle. It tabled the question and effectively gave 527 managers a green light in May.
So while the president's re-election campaign had raised approximately $215 million in hard money compared with the Kerry campaign's $149 million by the end of May, the Democrats' success in raising soft money through 527 groups has helped even the odds.
It's not just the money that irks the Republicans, though. Many of the Democrat-allied 527s are staffed by people with impressive Democratic Party and labor union pedigrees, fueling the complaint that these groups are anything but independent.
For example, Harold Ickes, president of the Media Fund, used to be President Clinton's deputy White House chief of staff. Steve Rosenthal, chief executive officer of America Coming Together, is a former political director for the AFL-CIO.
That question of independence is tricky. GOP congressional leaders gave their tacit approval to an existing Republican 527 when the FEC made it clear it wouldn't slow down the Democrats' soft money collections. The Leadership Forum, run by Susan Hirschmann, former chief of staff to Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Sugar Land, was originally established to conduct issue advocacy supporting Republican House candidates.
Nonetheless, Hirschmann concedes it's tough to get donors this late in the game. The Center for Responsive Politics reports donations this year are less than $500,000.
"That's exactly right," Hirschmann said. "We're playing catch-up."
But, but...Campaign Finance Reform "took money out of politics"...didn't it?
(end sarcasm)
McCain-Feingold simply prevents people from openly giving money to political parties for election campaigns. Smart, huh?
It's one of the worst laws ever passed in this country.
Notice the article mentions MoveOn but not the name of the pro-Bush group.
GW signed McCain Feingold. If he loses the election because of it, he only has himself to blame. WE THE PEOPLE, on the other hand, can hold GW accountable for stabbing us in the back.
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