Posted on 06/20/2006 12:15:17 AM PDT by RWR8189
"Republicans do not need, and should not attempt, to muzzle their opponents."
Nancy Pelosi? Harry Reid? Howard Dean?
Try Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), presumed 2008 presidential candidate, in a laudable attempt to return the Republican Party to its historic role as opponent of political-speech regulation. While Newt Gingrich has been railing against 2002's McCain-Feingold legislation in recent months, Allen's attack on the GOP's current effort to regulate so-called 527 groups -- independent organizations banned from coordinating with candidates or parties -- makes him the first top-tier '08 candidate to come out swinging against campaign-finance "reform."
Whether it's enough to force a serious confrontation on the issue between status quo politicians such as Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader Bill Frist and the fed-up conservative base remains to be seen. But it's at least a start. And where the various candidates line up on the issue over the next year and a half will tell Republican primary voters quite a lot about who's on board with Karl Rove's vision of a permanent, principle-less majority and who's ready to ready to rethink the mistakes of the last five-plus years.
Allen's attack on speech regulation (and threat to aid a filibuster) comes in a letter to Frist dated June 9, and is signed by six of his Senate colleagues: Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), Mike Enzi (R-Wy.), John Sununu (R-N.H.) and David Vitter (R-La.). It has received little attention from the press, but it's quite a stinging rebuke to the party's leadership.
Republicans, of course, used to be against allowing politicians to decide what's good (legal) and bad (illegal) speech -- because, oddly enough, when politicians have that power, they tend to come to the conclusion that any speech that could cost them their jobs is the bad kind. A president named George H.W. Bush vetoed campaign-finance reform. Speaker Newt Gingrich did everything he could to keep such bills off the House floor in the 1990s, and Majority Leader Trent Lott did the same in the Senate.
Now, however, senators who stood firm against McCain-Feingold in 2002, including Lott and Frist, and House members who did the same, such as one Dennis Hastert, have changed their minds. With the GOP firmly entrenched as the party of incumbents, they've apparently decided that if campaign-finance regulation can't be stopped, it might as well be used to ruthlessly go after their political opponents. And since Democratic 527s bring in more money than Republican ones, they simply must be destroyed.
Allen and his cosigners, however, don't see it that way: "As Republicans, we strongly believe in freedom, including freedom of expression and association. We campaigned for office on the principles of a limited and constitutional government. As elected officials we took an oath of office to 'support this Constitution'," the letter's opening states. "The First Amendment's dictates are a model of clarity."
And indeed they are: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech."
But perhaps Allen & Co. didn't get the memo. The modern Republican Party can't quite grasp the plain meaning of the Constitution. After all, its leader, President Bush, signed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, acknowledging that he believed it to be unconstitutional -- and leaving it to a bunch of well-known activist judges on the Supreme Court to figure out.
Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, went along under the theory that the law would hobble the Democrats, who relied more on the soft money that the bill banned than did the GOP. Fast forward to 2004, when Democratic 527s such as the MoveOn.org Voter Fund and America Coming Together raised tens of millions of dollars before their conservative counterparts had even left the gate, and Republicans decided it was time for a massive crackdown on this new "loophole."
The Republican Party's change of heart on campaign-finance reform, indeed, has tracked neatly with its overall surrender to the idea of "big-government conservatism," such as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003. Each of these bills betrayed timeless conservative, small-government principles to purchase temporary political gain.
Or, as Democratic campaign-finance attorney Robert Bauer recently put it: "Campaign finance regulation is the work of government, bureaucratic government, and its natural course is growth in volume, complexity, and intrusiveness. This is a price that the Republicans have been prepared to pay for political advantage."
Not all Republicans, though. Allen has cast his lot with the dissenters, and for whatever other flaws he might have as a candidate, on that he is to be congratulated. John McCain, for his part, has thrown in with the defenders of incumbency and government control of political speech -- as, it seems, has Frist.
What, then, of Rudy, Romney, and the others? Will they stand with the muzzlers? Or with the Constitution? The base will no doubt be watching.
I wouldn't regulate them either.
527s drain off money that would go into Democrat party coffers.
In return we get whackjob ads that we can point to and ask the public, "Do you really want those freaks running the country?"
The 527's enable the Far Left to control the Democratic Party openly.
This doesn't sit well with the moderate middle who liked to think the Democrats listen to them.
Now it is obvious who the Democrats listen to.
(Now, if only we could figure out who the Republicans are listening to, because it isn't the Left, Middle, or Right...)
George Allen PING!!!!!!!!!!
I don't get it. If it was not for the 527's, it is possible that we would have President Kerry. Why are folks against this. Remember that 527 brought us the rebuttle of the Kerry story of Vietnam. I must not understand the entire process.
You are so right. I don't care how much MONEY the rat 527s bring in. It's not a question of MONEY. The important thing is the content of the speech. In true David & Goliath fashion, that tiny group of swift vets, with far less money than the Soros Commie Hordes, took on the monolith of the leftist media and it's hero-of-the-moment (the new improved JFK) and won.
That's the thing that campaign-reform scumbags completely fail to understand:
It's not a question of MONEY. What matters is the freedom to speak out. No matter who you are. No matter what time in the political cycle it is. No matter what the MSM thinks or says and no matter what John The B@st@rd McCain thinks or says.
Out of curiosity, is MoveOn.org a 527? If so, I’d sure like to see them muzzled. I’m tired of seeing their commercial attacking Thelma Drake. It runs several times a day on all the local networks – I’ve put it into the same category (extremely annoying) as the Billy Mays ads. As soon as it comes on I switch channels.
I think Allen is the one. Taking the right position on a lot of issues, nice family, no big honking warts.
Broadcasting in general is a government-licensed activity. Which means that the people without government licenses are censored. Without that censorship of competing voices, radio transmission is not "broadcasting" because the transmissions cannot necessarily be received clearly.Broadcast journalism nearly turned the 2000 election from Bush to Gore by (incorrectly) announcing that Gore had won before the voting in the conservative Western Florida panhandle was completed. Yet there have been no legal repercussions against the broadcasters. Where is the plaintiff bar when we actually need it???
At this stage of technological history, with the Internet, it is far from clear that there is any justification for broadcast journalism. Ironically explicitly partisan advertisement is less tendentious than claiming to be objective is. Because arguing from a claim of superior virtue (whether it be called "objectivity" or "wisdom") is inherently arrogant.
Which is why I have always preferred the editorial page to the front page of a newspaper.
It sounds like you get it just fine. It's mainstream Republicans that don't get it. Mainstream Republicans think that they must track to the left to win elections. It's mainstream Republicans that have "nuanced" positions that conservatives stand against. Mainstream Republicans don't want to silence Democratic 527's. Rather, it's the voices of conservatives they want to mute.
George Allen is no mainstream Republican. He's a conservative Republican, and you can bank on that.
The DemonRats spent a lot more on their 527's in 2004, but the Republicans won with theirs, the greatest of which was the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Input does not necessarily equal output. Allen's on the right track here.
Thanks for the ping.
The SwiftVets were not a "Republican" 527; they were a Vietnam Veterans' 527. Their chief spokesman, John O'Neill, was a Democrat. Their membership, and their donor base, consisted of as many Dems as Repubs.
In fact, President Bush, to his discredit, came dangerously close to repudiating them when he allowed himself to be sucked into the machinations of John McCain and his Democrat allies' in their attempt to "close the loopholes" in the 527 regulations in order to silence the Swiftvets.
This is why Allen is so right to oppose regulating 527s.
Although the Swiftvets were Nerte organized as a "Republican" 527 nor coordinated with the Republican party in the 2004 election, I still think it's correct for us to view them as a "Republican" entity because of the great service they did in proving Kerry was a fake "war hero" and reelecting President Bush. I'm a Republican and, once I saw how effective they were, I sent the major portion of my 2004 contributions to them.
Okay.
I've hit Allen over the following:
1) Poll watcher
2) Shows timidity in face of media assaults (Cindy Sheehan for one)
3) Professes Reagan conservatism and pursues the conservative base, but doesn't take the lead on ANYTHING merely joins the conservative pack after others like Sessions had beaten the path.
This if the first thing he's done that sounds promising.
Standing against regulations on free speech, and standing against McCain in particular, would take some of that conservative spine I wasn't sure he had. He has hit to McCain hard though, one letter doesn't do it. It's not enough to be right on the issues, you have to be willing to lead on them and fight those that are not. Even if it jeopardizes "Senate civility". This is why Allen hasn't led the straw polls, even though he's usually anywhere between 2-4 in them. It's an embrace of conservatism that he does that well, but he needs to demonstrate leadership to land first and have conservatives say, "This is our guy". Right now, the race is still open.
It was the very fact of McCain creating the 527 law, with all its unintended consequences, followed by his unconscionable attack on the Swiftees, that made me realize what a pox he is on our party.
George Allen is not perfect but he is one of the best we have.
As far as I know they are a 527. And I totally agree with you in regard to the anti Thelma propaganda. It's horrendous.
Unfortunately this part of the Shore has been leaning more and more left. I'm doing what I can, but to be honest, it's your side of the Bay that's going to make or break her re-election. There is no base and no momentum over here.
When I resigned my positions with my local district and the Kent County (DE) Republican party because we were moving to VA, I had long thought we had become a joke. I didn't understand the meaning of the term until I got involved in the Accomack County Republican Party.
I posted prior to the crack of dawn this morning, prior to having gotten any sleep, and my post makes far more sense than yours.
I get the idea you don't think George Allen is enough of a conservative for your taste. There are times when I find him to be TOO conservative for my taste because he tends to avoid knockdown dragouts - and by nature I'm a brawler. Which is why I never chose to run for office - at any level.
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