The purported reason for BCRA (McCain-Feingold) was to get big-donor money out of election campaigns. Worked beautifully, didn’t it?
Let’s go back and ask why that law was necessary. Was it because Dubya won the election in 2000 riding a wave of huge donations? After all, the Republicans get all those rich folk to donate to them. People like George Soros? In 2000, Bush received money from donors that averaged $300. Gore’s donors gave an average of $800.
No, I guess that wasn’t the reason.
Perhaps the reason for BCRA was to prevent anyone other than politicians and their campaigns from buying air time. Well, of course all television, radio, and news media were exempt. That was the first red flag I saw. If only networks and local stations could provide campaign information, money had to be passed under the table or people like McCain had already figured they would get good press. And, of course, incumbents can always get air time.
My view of McCain-Feingold at the time was that the two major political parties and the incumbents had already figured out how to work their way around the law or none of them would have supported it. I didn’t then know about John McCain’s “non-partisan, non-profit foundation (which also happens to berate the President for not pushing ratification of the Kyoto Treaty). How many other career politicians have such a foundation?
Most politicians are honest, sincere people. But they’re politicians. They like their perks, and that means getting reelected. And they like control over that.
That is what BCRA was really all about. Control of the “election dialog.” Most of us understood that at the time. And recent events have done nothing but add emphasis to that view.
At first, McCain and others made noise about wanting to do something to do away with the freedom people have to form 527 organizations. Of course, the only one of those that had any real impact on the last election was the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. And they certainly weren’t “big money” folks. They barely scraped together enough money to put together their first television ad. So, that reason is a non-starter.
But wait. The Swifties got up a head of steam because of the blogosphere. And, by the way, bloggers were behind the downfall of Dan Rather’s fake memos.
Loss of control.
So, the FEC are convinced they must do something to rein in blogs. I wonder who convinced them.
There is a lot of information floating around on the topic. Ryan Sager has made it his mission. I hope to provide some information and analysis myself. And there is a copy of the first draft of the rules to be considered by the FEC over at Redstate.org. You might want to compare it to the one they released after the blogswarm. And Hugh Hewitt, a lawyer who has dealt with such things before, has some powerful advice for all who read and write blogs.
Right now, all I can do is point you in the right direction for keeping tabs on this issue. And if you think this is a partisan endeavor, think again. We are all in this together. People like John McCain are more concerned with their own staus and power than they are with our rights. And you can rest assured, the FEC commissioners are not making their judgements in a vacuum. They have plenty of help from Capitol Hill.
They need to hear from all of us. I will post any comments I submit to them. Feel free to post any you submit in the comments. As soon as the minutes from Thursday’s meeting and the resulting rules proposals are posted on their site, I’ll let you know. There is some concern on their part right now. The Ex parte communication from U.S. Senators John McCain and Russell Feingold and U.S. Representatives Christopher Shays and Marty Meehan linked on the site has never been available any time I’ve tried to access it.
So much for open government. As Glenn Reynolds said, “In fact, I told somebody that we should sleep soundly, because we have the word of two senators that nothing will come of this. And if you can’t rely on the word of two senators…you’re in Washington!”