Loopholes let GOP haul it in – for Missouri prez race
WASHINGTON _ The new Republican fundraising plan isn’t all that surprising once you understand that a campaign contribution, like water, always finds the cracks.
What’s a tad ironic is the beneficiary of this campaign cash: John McCain, who has spent considerable energy over the years trying to close campaign finance loopholes.
The Wall Street Journal reports today that McCain allies have identified loopholes in the contribution law that McCain helped write – cracks enabling a GOP fund set up to help governors.
The Republican Governors Association isn’t subject to contribution limits and thus is telling big donors to write checks that will be used to help elect McCain.
The Journal quotes a wealthy GOPer who wrote a check for ten times the legal limits under the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law as saying that a contribution to the governors group is “the best way to help McCain.”
This development could have a bearing on what happens locally. The association’s executive director, Nick Ayers, says his organization will target Missouri, America’s bellwether, along with two usually Republican states, North Carolina and Indiana.
Ayers freely admits that the plan is designed to help McCain and explains it in barnyard terms: “It’s like planting a lot of food out in the field for one cow; it helps that one cow, but all the other cows appreciate it, too.”
Since McCain-Feingold became law of the land in ’02, parties and contributors have figured ways to evade limits. The most popular trick was deplying so-called 527s – outside groups in both major political parties that plowed close to a half-billion bucks into the ’04 contest.
This time around, it’s no secret that the GOP has been looking for ways to match Barack Obama’s prodigious fund-raising abilities, primarily from small donors. Obama freed himself from spending limits this fall by spurning the federal matching system – after saying early on that he’d subscribe to it.
In another GOP effort that surfaced this week, the Republican National Committee set up an independent expenditure arm ostensibly to be free of the $20 million or so expenditure limit that the RNC can spend in coordination with the McCain campaign.
This device will be used principally for attack ads against Obama, according to speculation.
Reformers – McCain among them – had in mind a system under which by ’08 candidates would be spending about $85 million each for an eight-week campaign.
But when all the spending on this election is tallied up, it could total more like $1 billion.
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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Duh! The GOP and Bush/McCain illegally opted in, the out of public financing for the primaries. It’s no surprise now that more funds fudging is goimg on another way at the same time.
Slick Johnny Mc, campaign finance criminal! The GOP slimes again!