By Andrew Cline on 4.7.06 @ 12:08AM
The left gets a taste of its own anti-rich rhetoric -- though all of us will pay in the end.
Back in the late 1990s and early part of this decade the left
drove campaign finance reform by spreading fears that the
superwealthy (read: rich Republicans and conservative corporations)
were buying elections for their friends, thereby cutting average
folks (the proletariat) out of the picture.
If only the government strictly limited how much money
individuals could spend to influence elections, then the playing
field would be leveled and the influence of the little guy would
match that of the fat cat. They never counted on the fat cats being
on their side.
Then came the 2004 presidential election. That year, a new
entity called a 527, a tax-exempt non-profit dedicated to educating
the public about political issues and named after its section of
the tax code, became a force in national politics. The biggest of
the 527s -- groups like MoveOn.org, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,
and America Coming Together -- raised and spent hundreds of
millions of dollars to tell Americans what they thought about the
issues of the day.
With Republicans in control of Congress and the White House, the
GOP vastly outraised the Democrats that year. Republicans at the
national level raised $898 million vs. $679 million for the
Democrats, according to National Review's Byron York.
However, what the left lacked in access to governmental power it
made up in anger and access to its own fat cats. Left-wing
billionaire George Soros donated on the order of $24 million to
527s in 2004. With backing like that, left-leaning 527s trounced
right-leaning ones in fund-raising and spending by well over $100
million.
With access to unlimited funds from rich benefactors, the left
was able to counter the right's message on the airwaves, in print,
and online. And, as one might have expected, that did not sit well
with Republicans. Thanks to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance
law passed with the help of left-wing activists under the banner of
giving the people a voice, Republicans had a weapon with which to
silence their critics.
This week they took a step toward doing just that, passing a
bill that limits the amount individuals can donate to 527s. They
got away with constricting 527 funding by calling the bill an
extension of McCain-Feingold. They weren't silencing opponents, you
see, they were just "closing the loophole" that allowed these
nefarious 527s to raise unlimited amounts of cash to -- gasp! --
influence the outcome of an election.
If the bill passes the Senate, in this fall's mid-term elections
George Soros won't be able to squander his fortune by using 527s to
tell Americans of all the horrible things he thinks Republicans are
doing. Left-wing activism will have been partially defunded by its
own anti-fat cat rhetoric.
It would be funny if it weren't so serious. The government is
extending its control over political speech, and hardly anyone
issues a peep of protest because the public has bought the idea
that the real danger to our republic is rich people spending money
to buy TV ads, rather than government slowly gaining more power
over what we can say, and when, where, and how we can say it.
topics:
Law
