By Miguel Ringler
Senator Mitch McConnell was boasting on the news this week that the Republicans in Senate will have enough votes to kill the Shays/ Meehan “Campaign Finance Reform” bill that just passed congress. If he can’t vote it down, he and the other Republicans will probably have enough votes to tack on some bogus amendments that’ll make the bill worthless. The pressure’s on Mitch to make sure the bill doesn’t make it to the President Bush’s desk. He doesn’t want to sign it, but it wouldn’t look too good for the President to VETO a campaign finance reform bill, especially since the whole country knows that he took a suitcase full of money from Enron. He’s afraid people might not be happy to find out that our government has been sold to the highest bidder. The country is ready for campaign finance reform and President Bush doesn’t want to be the one to say no.
The bill that McConnell wants to kill is the one attempting to curb bribery on capital hill. In the early seventies it became clear that there was too much money in the system, that the rich had access to the political machine and the poor didn’t. There were too many politicians accepting suitcases of money from special interests. It was decided that the rich and powerful shouldn’t be able to buy politicians anymore. To stop the selling of influence, a “Hard-Money” cap was passed to prevent anyone from donating more than $1,000 to a politicians campaign fund. What’s happened in the last fifteen years is that clever politicians have figured out a way of getting those big, fat, juicy suitcases full of money through a loophole in the system called “Soft-Money.” Soft-money is a fundraising loophole created for “bring out the vote” campaigns and “Party Building.”
What it’s become is a bloated system of bribery and blackmail that has so utterly corrupted the political system that almost the entire Bush West Wing has taken money from a giant company that’s robbed the American people of millions. Thanks to generous donations, the government wasn’t watching when they cooked their books and robbed the country of hundreds of millions. The Vice President is about to go on trial to try to prevent the public from finding out just what Enron bought with it’s campaign contributions.
The Republican Party raises a lot more hard-money than the Democrats and with their “New” plans for another big tax cut for the rich they can expect that campaign money to keep rolling in. So why, you may be wondering, are they so worried about losing soft money? There are several good reasons.
For starters, the Republican Party runs on a platform of Christian Family Values. Great! When you run on a platform of Christian Family Values and you dump your aging wife for a cute young campaign worker, your going to need a lot of extra campaign money to attack your opponent to hide the fact that you’re a hypocrite. (Thank you very much Mr. Hutchinson, Gramm, Helms, Thurmond, Dole, Gingrich…and on and on) The Democrats aren’t immune to this, it happens far too often, and it’s gross, but at least the Democrats aren’t going around waving a bible, demanding resignations from people who are committing the same sin that they’re guilty of. So, you see, a lot of that soft-money is going to be spent creating the illusion of “Christian Family Values.”
Secondly, without soft-money, both parties will lose the ability to run those nasty little attack ads that traditionally run during the closing weeks of an election, the ones that are full of lies that you only find out about right after the election is over. This is one that’s near and dear to President Bush’s heart, he’ll miss these the most. Two excellent examples of these ads came in the New York, Republican primary in 1999. With a week left before the election, George Bush was trailing John McCain in the polls and if he didn’t win New York, it might spell doom for his campaign. The first of the soft-money commercials opened with a picture of George Bush’s smiling head floating across a field of flowers. There was a voice that told us how George Bush had cleaned up Texas, how pollution had been drastically reduced during his four years as Governor and Texas was fast becoming one of the cleanest states in the country. Next came a picture of John McCain’s angry head. It was floating atop a dark factory, black smoke pouring out of his head. The voice told us that Senator John McCain had a terrible record on the environment and that he had cozied up to several of the worst polluting companies in the country.
The ad was very effective. The environment is an important to New York voters, but what the commercial neglected to mention was that during Bush’s years as Governor of Texas it became the #1 most polluted state in the country. His system of “Voluntary Reform” had failed badly. The ad also didn’t mention that Houston had surpassed Los Angeles as the country’s “Most Polluted City.” In short, the ad was a lie. The Bush campaign agreed that the ad was a low blow, but that they had nothing to do with it – private citizens had paid it for with soft-money, and that’s “Free Speech.”
The other ad that was run had a woman who had lost her daughter to breast cancer, she was paid to talk about John McCain’s insensitive vote against a bill that would fund a Breast Cancer research center. It was true, he had voted down the bill. What the ad didn’t mention was that John McCain had supported several bills for breast cancer research and in fact had a very good record on breast cancer treatment. This particular bill was loaded up with unrelated pork barrel amendments and had little to do with breast cancer. Once again, the Bush campaign was dumbfounded; they had no idea who had paid for the ads. They agreed that it was a low blow, and that Senator McCain had a good record on breast cancer. Unfortunately, there was nothing they could do. The ad was paid for by private citizens.
A week after the election was over and John McCain was out of the race it came out that the 2.5 million-dollar smear campaign was paid for by a couple of Texas businessmen, good friends and longtime supporters of Governor Bush. For a sneaky politician, these ads are great. They’re very effective. Big business loves ad’s like this, when you’ve bought a politician, it’s great to be able to smear their path to victory. What’s a few million, when you know that they’re going to pay you back as soon as they get into office.
Another excellent use for soft-money if to blackmail people who are already in office. With the current system, if I was a congressman from Louisville and I decided to vote against a large, powerful organization like the National Rifle Association, or the Teamsters, or the Christian Coalition, I could expect my next opponent to have their full backing in the next election. I could also expect some very nasty and dishonest campaign advertisements to pop up against me. These organizations are very wrathful and many politicians have learned the hard way that to go against them is political suicide. No one should have this much influence. It’s blackmail, which, contrary to Senator Mitch’s beliefs, is not protected by the First Amendment.
Senator McConnell would like you to believe that soft-money bribery is protected by the First Amendment, but it’s not. The freedom that he’s selling to the highest bidder isn’t affordable to a lot of people. Somebody should let him know, but unfortunately there’s only one way to get into his office, and that’s with plenty of money. It’s what Senator McConnell calls freedom of speech, my friend, and you just can’t afford it.
m_ringler@yahoo.com
