The Double Talk Express: McCain is a Fraud on Campaign Finance Reform (Updated)

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Senator John McCain should get an award for his method acting.  He puts on his serious face and talks in measured words imbued with a solemn tone so that his base in the news media will think that he is saying something really important that they ought to report – while on the inside, he is laughing at them with derision at how easy it is for him to manipulate them into dutifully reporting every word he says, when he knows that he is LYING HIS ASS OFF!

The most recent example of this Kabuki theater was the McCain campaign getting the vapors and hyperventilating about Senator Barack Obama’s announcement that he will not participate in public financing in the general election campaign.  (There is something surreal about a Republican complaining that a Democrat will not spend the public’s money).

McCain’s base in the news media dutifully reported his campaign’s spin on Obama’s announcement like good little stenographers – "he broke his promise!" – without reporting that McCain has unclean hands, that he has violated the campaign finance law which ironically bears his name and FEC regulations for which several complaints are currently pending before the FEC.  I have addressed McCain’s campaign finance fraud at length in my earlier post Blog For Arizona: The Double Talk Express: McCain is a Fraud on Campaign Finance Reform.

Update: The DNC announced last week that it will refile a lawsuit previously dismissed on grounds it was premature this Tuesday. DNC TO FILE COMPLAINT AGAINST MCCAIN CAMPAIGN FOR FEC VIOLATIONS, HOLDING MCCAIN RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO.

The Democratic National Committee today announced that it will file a suit with the U.S. District Court in D.C. next week to compel the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to investigate John McCain’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from the FEC’s matching funds program despite using the program to financially benefit his campaign, which is clearly against the law. While John McCain talks about transparency and running a different kind of campaign, his actions and rhetoric clearly don’t square as he continues to skirt FEC law.

Let’s be clear. Obama did not "promise" to participate in public financing as McCain falsely asserted.  In completing a survey from a public interest organization, Obama checked a box for "yes" and added a detailed explanation that his participation was conditioned upon his ability to negotiate an agreement with the Republican nominee, if he were the Democratic nominee, to limit campaign spending to public financing, i.e., to limit the independent expenditures traditionally engaged in by the RNC and DNC, and attempt to limit spending from affiliated independent campaign committees.  McCain and the news media have focused only on the check off box, and disingenuously disregarded Obama’s detailed explanation to paint an inaccurate and misleading picture.

Lawyers for the two campaigns recently met but did not reach an agreement, i.e., the condition precedent that would give rise to a promise did not occur.  There was never any meeting of the minds that gave rise to a promise.  You don’t have to be a lawyer to understand this most basic legal concept.  (In reality, neither campaign really wanted such an agreement).

Fortunately, there are some in the news media who still do their job.  The fullest factually accurate discussion of this matter that I could find was this discussion between Keith Olbermann from Countdown and Howard Fineman from Newsweek.

See the video after the ‘Continue’…