Replies

Advocacy Groups Permitted to Use Unlimited Funds . . . Ruling Favors Democrats
--New York Times, lead story, February 19
FEC Moves to Regulate Groups Opposing Bush
--Washington Post, same day

(1) You know, I remember reading those stories. And I remember being totally confused by them. Should I be embarrassed? No

Actually, there's no way in hell the commission's February 18 ruling--and related, still-pending rulings that might logically follow--could possibly help the Democratic party.

(2) Whoa, back up a minute. What exactly did the FEC do on February 18?

ABC intended to use huge, unregulated pots of cash--deposited in separate, "nonfederal" bank accounts that weren't registered with the FEC--to produce the same, "sham" electioneering appeals that campaign finance reformers had hoped to make illegal. Can we do that, ABC asked the FEC last November? How much soft money does the new law allow us to raise and spend on behalf of the Bush reelection campaign?
To make a long story short, the FEC's February 18 answer was: Not very much.

(3) Why should the commission's less than accommodating response to a Bush-friendly group of Republicans pose problems for the Democratic party?

Most observers don't believe ABC ever really intended to pursue the extensive agenda of broadcast and grassroots pro-Bush activity outlined in that query letter. Most observers think, instead, that ABC's sole ambition was to secure a public regulatory pronouncement from the commission about the legality of such a program: Can a Republican 527 raise and spend soft money in support of George W. Bush exactly the way those Democratic 527s are raising and spending soft money against him? Most observers suspect that ABC always wanted the FEC to say "no way."

(4) These Democratic 527 groups you speak of--they're the people financier George Soros has been giving money to, aren't they?

Yes.
ACT executive Cecile Richards, previously a top aide to House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, is doing double duty as president of America Votes, a 527 whose job it is to ensure that a long list of cooperating nonprofit groups traditionally friendly to the Democratic party--Planned Parenthood, the NEA, the Sierra Club, People for the American Way, the trial lawyers, and so forth--don't work at cross purposes with ACT and its satellites.
It's a vast left-wing conspiracy, you might say.

(5) So the FEC was being asked to take sides in a purely partisan argument, is that it? Democrats are the pro-527 faction, and Republicans are their enemies?

More or less.
Not so many years ago, the most notorious such 527 project was run by a man named Newt Gingrich. It was called GOPAC. Most Republicans defended the practice (and soft money generally) on free speech grounds. Almost everyone in the Democratic party, on the other hand, railed against GOPAC-like 527 schemes (and soft money generally) as a species of political corruption. And those were the positions both parties maintained right up through the congressional enactment of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform in 2002.
Since then, the Supreme Court has (a) dramatically reinterpreted its 27-year-old "express advocacy" footnote; and (b) included with that reinterpretation a crucial, brand-new footnote the obscurity of which we will no doubt be debating for another 27 years; while (c) upholding McCain-Feingold's prohibitions on soft money fundraising by the national political committees. So all of a sudden, Newt Gingrich is forgotten, Democratic GOPACs are popping up all over, and it's Republicans who are decrying the 527s as an unconscionable "loophole," demanding that something be done.

(6) What about the campaign finance reform lobby? Surely, having worked for years to put the major-party soft money machines out of business, the reformers don't want to see a private, even less accountable version of that system recreated by a couple dozen rich guys like George Soros. Surely the reform folks are lining up with Republicans on this one, no?

Surely you jest.

(7) Has anyone in this controversy acted honorably, or at least taken a position that isn't hypocritical?

Sure. John McCain favored a broad-scale regulatory crackdown on soft money in federal elections before. And he favors it now . . . Three smaller campaign finance advocacy groups also stuck by their philosophical guns last month . . .
Bradley Smith, as did one of the other Republican FEC commissioners, cast an honorable vote against the interests of his own party. . . . In the end, the FEC's third Republican commissioner, joined by all three of his Democratic counterparts (who were voting against the interests of their party, it bears pointing out), embraced the entire, essential substance of the staff's first draft.

(8) What's the bottom line on the Soros people and the $300 million they want to spend against President Bush?

It is difficult to imagine how the commission could fail to conclude that an outfit like the Media Fund has the same "major purpose" as ACT--with whom the fund is joined at the hip, and from whom it is otherwise indistinguishable, as both organizations routinely admit. And should the commission indeed draw such a conclusion, then the Media Fund and all the others would immediately become subject to the full reach of federal election law: None would be permitted to accept more than $5,000 per year from George Soros for use against George W. Bush. And under separate but related provisions of the law, Soros would be prohibited from contributing more than a total $37,500 for that purpose--to all the 527s put together, during the whole, biennial 2003-2004 election cycle.
That $300 million would appear to be evaporating awfully fast.

(9) What's the bottom line on the the whole election, then? Are you saying Bush is a lock?

If "things are bad" and they're in the mood, the voters are going to "send Bush back to Texas," as the saying goes, no matter how much money gets squirreled into anybody's bank accounts. And if the reverse is true, yes, Bush is going to win, but campaign fundraising won't have made the difference.
But . . . if the election is . . . a close one . . . And. . . if . . . money really can make the difference . . . it looks like Bush really will be a lock. Unless the Democratic party--and fast--can figure out a way around the no-soft-money boulder that's been placed in its path by the campaign finance reform law. For which Democrats have only themselves, principally, to blame.
'Tis sport to see the engineer,
hoist on his own petard!

Mark my words--even it this scenario eventuates, the fault will be with the FEC and not with the unconstitutional regulation of political speech. Journalists are shameless. Well, they are liberals . . .

Who's Afraid of George Soros?
FrontPage Magazine.com | David Tell