Patrick Casey's blog

As the GOP in Congress appears about to be taking an "every man for himself" strategy for the fall elections, Gallup has just given the Republicans another gift (Americans Oppose Income Redistribution to Fix Economy). The results of this poll show that if the GOP ever gets back to preaching and adhering to the simple message that they used to have - one that they've previously ridden to victory on - they'd be shoe-ins in 2008. Whether or not the Republicans have cleaned their own house enough to take advantage of something like this remains to be seen.

Barack Obama is running on an economic platform that promises to "restore fairness to the tax code". On the same page of his campaign website that that quote came from, Obama also refers to Bush's "Tax Cuts for Wealthy Instead of Middle Class". Put the two of them together and the message that Obama is sending to the public is that he wants to take money from the wealthy and give to the middle class - the very definition of the "Income Redistribution" that this Gallup poll measures public opinion on. Obama doesn't even have to actively do much for this redistribution to happen - all he has to do is let the Bush tax cuts expire.

The numbers in this poll are staggering. Overall, Americans are against the core principle behind Barack Obama's domestic economic policy - income redistribution - by an astounding 84% to 13%. Republicans oppose it 90%-9%, Independents oppose it 85% to 13%, and even Democrats oppose it 77% to 19%.

Gallup has been the gold standard of polling for Democrats for decades. These days, the media is continually promoting Obama's theory of "bringing back fairness" to the tax code. In fact, the "tax fairness" war-cry has been at the core of the Democrats' message machine, and has been endlessly promoted by their minions in the media, since 2000. With those facts in mind, these particular poll results are breathtaking. To give you an idea of how important even Gallup thinks this poll is, the explanatory narrative that goes along with the results were written by Dennis Jacobe, Gallup's Chief Economist:

PRINCETON, NJ -- When given a choice about how government should address the numerous economic difficulties facing today's consumer, Americans overwhelmingly -- by 84% to 13% -- prefer that the government focus on improving overall economic conditions and the jobs situation in the United States as opposed to taking steps to distribute wealth more evenly among Americans.

Americans' lack of support for redistributing wealth to fix the economy spans political parties: Republicans (by 90% to 9%) prefer that the government focus on improving the economy, as do independents (by 85% to 13%) and Democrats (by 77% to 19%). This sentiment also extends across income groups: upper-income Americans prefer that the government focus on improving the economy and jobs by 88% to 10%, concurring with middle-income (83% to 16%) and lower-income (78% to 17%) Americans.

In this poll, Gallup also asked another question - is the government, in general, doing too much or too little? While the results on this question aren't quite as dramatic as the results on the income distribution question, the poll still shows that a majority of Americans believe that the government is doing too much (read: screwing it up) as opposed to too little.

A separate question finds Americans more likely to believe government is doing too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses (50%) as opposed to saying government should do more to solve the country's problems (43%). This broad question is not directed specifically at the economy, but reinforces the general idea that many Americans are leery of too much direct government intervention in fixing the country's problems.

Americans of all incomes, social strata, and political affiliations get it - we can't tax our way out of this, and the government isn't the right entity to save us. The Republican message to Americans - before the Congressional GOP became the party of pork, earmarks, and corruption - was to keep taxes low and focus on improving both the economy and job creation by encouraging business to do what they are designed to do and do best - employ people and make money. As for the old "limited government" question - a subject of heated debate even within the ranks of conservatives today - this poll shows that the public clearly thinks that less government is better government.

Unless I'm mistaken, all of these results show support for - dare I say it - Reagan-brand conservatism. Even after all this time - after all the liberal garbage that the Democrats and the media relentlessly shove in our faces - when the public is faced with an economic crisis, Reagan's conservative message of low taxes and limited government still wins.

This poll clearly shows that the conservative message, especially on the economy, has gotten through. What's still unclear, however, is if the current group of Republicans are the right ones to take the GOP back to majority status. The Republicans in Congress have to be united and show some guts, something that they seem reluctant to do. For instance, the report in today's New York Times on the expansion of earmarks (Earmarks Persist in Spending Bills for 2009), especially coming after the Democrats rode to victory in 2006 promising to end them, is particularly embarrassing for the GOP. A true no-brainer, an earmark moratorium by the Republicans would send out a signal of fiscal responsibility to the public during a time of economic crisis that the Democrats would never be able to match, and the media would never be able to cover up. Coupling that with a promise to submit requests for funding all future non-emergency local projects to the appropriate committees to be inserted into the appropriate bills - where they can be seen and debated by all, including the public - is a political winner. Why the Republicans haven't taken these simple steps this year is beyond my comprehension.

I don't know what else can be said to convince the GOP to take such logical actions and re-embrace their conservative values, other than to point out the fact that if this bunch of Republican Senators and Congressmen don't get it, perhaps the next bunch will...

As we read in this morning's Politico (McCain, GOP unleash anti-Obama plan) that the Right is coalescing around a unified message against Barack Obama, we simultaneously find that Obama is handing the "I'm just another politician from Chicago" issue to John McCain and the Republicans on a silver platter.

In this morning's edition of ABC News' "The Note", Rick Klein has the following to say about Barack Obama and his "evolving" positions:

Thursday's landmark Supreme Court may or may not have plopped gun control into the campaign. But it does place Sen. Barack Obama's careful, cautious, sometimes contradictory (and dare we say Clintonian?) approach to tricky policy positions squarely in the center of the race.

...Name your issue -- on trade, taxes, guns, the death penalty, campaign finance reform, FISA -- Obama may well be taking the politically smart position for a Democrat in these early days of the general election.

But the point is that he's taking positions that are at least shaded differently than those he's taken in the past, if not outright flip-flops. These are political calculations that make a dangerous assumption for Obama: that he's willing to risk being called a "politician" at all.

Obama's switch from being an "agent of change" to being an "agent of party politics and the status quo" really is remarkable. The one thing that Barack Obama has going in his favor is that as the primary season ended, most of the American public (aside from the media, political types, and their groupies) have pretty much tuned out for the summer (Gallup: Election Enthusiasm Dips After Primaries). So right now, there a better than even chance that large numbers of voters aren't aware that Obama has been flip-flopping on issues more than John Kerry ever dreamed of.

On the other hand, there's a risk for Obama if many of his supporters, especially those independents on the fence, start paying attention again to the campaign in late August only to find that the Obama of August 2008 is not the same as the Obama they thought they knew - that being the Obama of January - April 2008.

Look for the Obama campaign to work hard over the summer to cement the conventional wisdom and media meme that the Obama of "today" - on FISA, gun control, campaign finance reform, and several other issues that are popping up - is the same Obama that "we all" fell in love with over the winter.

An excellent example of certain parts of the media's complicity with Obama's plan is found in this morning's New York Times' article on the Supreme Court's Heller decision. In the 27th paragraph, Linda Greenhouse (didn't she retire?) states "Mr. Obama, who like Mr. McCain has been on record as supporting the individual-rights view, said the ruling would “provide much-needed guidance to local jurisdictions across the country.”". As anyone who is familiar with Obama's previous claim that the DC ban was "constitutional", this is a transparent and subtle attempt by Greenhouse to whitewash Obama's changing positions. This is how Obama and his supporters are going to try to change the public record - by injecting Obama's new positions frequently into public discussion as long-time established fact, thus creating a substantial paper trail for the "change agent" to point to as proof of his unwavering commitment to static positions on various issues - aka "the courage of his convictions".

It will be up to the Republicans and the McCain campaign to continually offer proof otherwise, creating a substantial, alternate and more accurate conventional wisdom. 

Some of the stuff that I comment on, or propose, is at odds with things that John McCain has said in the recent past. That's because while I am interested in the present, I'm primarily about the future - be it next week, next month, or next year. Conservative principles are a proven commodity. They've won Presidencies for the Republicans, and also majorities in the House and Senate. If McCain decides to jettison some of those principles in the hope of getting good news coverage, that's his problem. The media never has been, is not, and never will be your friend, Senator McCain. They just used you as an effective foil against President Bush.

If some of what I (and many other like myself) write about and propose is counter to what John McCain is out there talking about, so be it. If he's smart and wants to win, he and his campaign will listen. If not, he has only himself to blame. In other words, I'm kind of talking past McCain. Don't get me wrong, I hope he wins. But the reason why I hope he wins is not because I believe in everything he says, it's because I believe that the alternative would be disastrous for American and the world. We conservatives played our "spite" games with Ross Perot in 1992, and it gave us Bill Clinton and his minions - and the eternal coarsening of American politics. We don't need to go there again. And we don't have to - I think that we can build a solid case for people to vote against Barack Obama's based on his proposed policies and 'solutions'. For when you scratch the surface of Obama even a little bit, it's readily apparent that there's no "there" there.

Having said that, I'd like to call everyone's attention to this article in Computer World: Blogger launches 'Google bomb' at McCain. Subtitled "Effort aims to boost Google rankings of negative news stories about Sen. John McCain", it's the story of Chris Bowers of OpenLeft and his attempt (which will succeed, by the way - he's done it before) to game Google. He's highlighting negative McCain stories that include some rather interesting quotes from the candidate himself on issues from tax cuts to the just passed GI Bill.

I don't have the technical know-how to either understand this, or do anything about it. But I trust that people on our side are counter-Google Bombing now that this is in the open (with positive McCain articles and negative stories about Obama)? If not, someone had better get started. We have enough problems already...

At the heart of Barack Obama's economic proposals - those that he has promised to deliver if he becomes President - is the expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts. He promises to "restore fairness to the tax code", and provide middle class tax relief. While we can all applaud the objective of more tax relief, Obama plans on 'paying' for this by allowing the Bush Tax cuts to expire - a punitive measure against the 'rich'.

Republicans, now that Lincoln Chafee is out of the party, need a unified and strong message against such a stupid move. They were handed one earlier today in the form of an interview with the Nobel prize winning economist Robert Mundell in the Wall Street Journal: An Economist Who Matters.

Mundell, Professor of Economics at Columbia University in New York, has served as an adviser to the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank, the European Commission, several governments in Latin America and Europe, the Federal Reserve Board, the US Treasury and the Government of Canada. He is considered to be the father of the euro - first proposing a common currency in Europe in the 70s - and won his Nobel Prize in Economic Science in 1999. His world-wide credentials are impeccable.

His interview with the Wall Street Journal's Kyle Wingfield this morning is fascinating. For our purposes, let's focus on what he views as the biggest threat to the world economy at the moment - allowing the Bush Tax Cuts to expire:

Back in America, there's an election going on. There's also been a spate of financial problems, not the least of which is a weak dollar. But Mr. Mundell says "the big issue economically . . . is what's going to happen to taxes."

Democratic nominee Barack Obama regularly professes disdain for the Bush tax cuts, suggesting that those growth-spurring measures may be scrapped. "If that happens," Mr. Mundell predicts, "the U.S. will go into a big recession, a nosedive."

One of the original "supply-side" economists, he has long preached the link between tax rates and economic growth. "It's a lethal thing to suddenly raise taxes," he explains. "This would be devastating to the world economy, to the United States, and it would be, I think, political suicide" in a general election.

..."the most important thing that could be done with respect to tax rates now is to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Eliminating that uncertainty would be more important than pushing for a further cut – in the income tax rates, anyway."

To a media and a general public that views the bestowing of a Nobel Prize as the ultimate in credibility, this is pretty hard stuff. Are we to believe what Nobel winner Al Gore tells us, but ignore Nobel winner Mundell?

The interview is full of other interesting observations. Mundell feels that the optimum top tax rate in the United States should be 30%, and that the corporate tax rate should be 25%. He also believes that exchange rates should be fixed, much like they were fixed under Breton Woods until Nixon. He would like to see the EU and the Federal Reserve come to some sort of an agreement to keep the euro (whose idea he originated over three decades ago) between $0.90 and $1.30. Mundell also favors making the dollar the dominant currency against which all other currency would be fixed (he feels that the euro is vastly overvalued at present).

But it's his message on the expiration of the Bush Tax cuts which is most important to us, and to the nation. It's a message that all Republicans, and anyone else interested in our economy, should offer as a constant repeated message:

"The world's pre-eminent Nobel Prize winner in Economics has just told us that if we allow the Bush Tax cuts to expire, it will immediately plunge us into a deep recession - much worse that the situation we are currently slowly crawling out of - and will be disastrous to the world's economy for years to come. That world-wide economic disaster is precisely what Barack Obama has proposed."

Obama's populist message to tax the so-called rich and cut the taxes of the middle class relies solely on age-old class envy. But his dirty little secret is that he's smart enough to know that if the so-called 'rich' don't do well, the middle class doesn't get paid - and everyone suffers. The GOP must ask people to sit back and think for a moment. To go after the 'rich' in order to punish them, be it people who make $100K, $250K, or a million dollars a year, always hurts the people whose lives depend on those 'rich' people. Those other lives consist of the middle-class people that are directly employed by the 'rich', and middle-class people who are employed by the companies that the 'rich' buy goods or services from. And how about the elderly who rely on the income from retirement funds or stock sales to live, and to help their families? They would be hurt by Obama's so-called "fairness" as well.

Obama's populist claptrap is easy to poke holes it. But the press is going to protect him as much as they can. The GOP must have a unified, consistent, and loud message on issues like taxes. That is the only way that the Republicans are going to be heard above the media by the American people.

Ah, the Democrats. They wanted to change Congress, and they have. Today's Gallup Poll shows Congress' lowest confidence level ever - at 12%. Note that this is Gallup's annual rating, not the monthly tracking update of Congressional approval:

PRINCETON, NJ -- Gallup's annual update on confidence in institutions finds just 12% of Americans expressing confidence in Congress, the lowest of the 16 institutions tested this year, and the worst rating Gallup has measured for any institution in the 35-year history of this question.

For comparison, the 2006 "Confidence in Institutions" level for Congress (when the GOP was in charge) was at 19% - considerably better than this year's figure, but still admittedly anemic.

Gallup also recently released their June 2008 approval poll, and it showed the Democratic Congress at an approval rating of 19%. Compare that with the Congressional approval numbers for the GOP controlled Congress in the June 2006 poll at 27%. Even immediately before the 2006 November elections, when the GOP got routed, the Republican-led Congress had an approval rating of 26%.

I'd also observe that in 2006, the media was working feverishly to portray the Republicans in the worst light possible. The situation is reversed this year (actually ever since the Democrats took over control of Congress in 2007). The press is doing their best to cover for the Democrats - from Barack Obama on down. And no-one has promoted a Democratic Congress more than the media.

Can the Republicans take advantage of this? Probably not with the same faces in control, unless they do something drastic over the next few months. And with the Congressional recesses and local campaigning upcoming, I'm afraid it might be too late. But these numbers do show that virtually no-one likes Congress right now - so there is still a chance. Pundits point out that along with historically low approval ratings, polls like Gallup also show that the voters still want the Democrats to lead Congress. I posit that those superficially conflicting polls are a result not of the public thinking that the Democrats "haven't had a chance to change things yet", but because the Republicans still haven't offered the public 1) evidence that they've learned their lesson, and 2) a real alternative message to the Democrats that appeals to people. To succeed, the Republicans have to offer a positive message packaged with a reminder of the Democrats' negatives.

If I were a GOP campaign, I'd use as a background picture in all of my ads one of the Democratic Leadership (Pelosi and Reid) together with the opposition's local candidate. Superimposed over the picture would be their approval numbers, the change in the price of gas from 2007 to today, figures indicating that economic growth has stagnated since the Dems were elected, etc. - creating an overall image tying the Democrats to the 'pain' Americans are going through. (God, I hate sounding Clintonian...) Depending on the development of Obama's negatives over the next few months, I'd consider adding him to the background as well - along with the liberal enemy du jour. (A perfect example of that enemy today would be Chris Dodd and Countrywide.) Make the Democrats own what's "bad" that's happening in our nation today.

The Democrats are going to try to do the same to the GOP with President Bush - use him in attack ads. That's why it's imperative for everyone in the GOP to immediately point out ad nauseum that it's the Democratic Congress that controls the country, legislation, and the purse-strings - and that by bringing up President Bush, who is not up for re-election, Democrats are ignoring the present and still fighting the past ("stuck on stupid"). Candidates should contrast that with the GOP, which is dedicated to fighting for us in the present for the future.

The GOP's job would be made manifestly easier if they'd come together on something like an immediate earmark moratorium, but that die appears to be cast already. There are issues that can be coalesced around, however. Polls show that Newt's "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less" is one such winner. The Republican Study Committee and Rep. Paul Ryan have moreideas that I think would resonate, especially in Ryan's "A Roadmap for America's Future".

Do the Republicans have time to organize and really offer something concrete and different from the Democrats? I think that they do. People I talk to on a daily basis are sick and tired of politics already (especially Presidential politics). The public's ready to tune out for the summer. The next time anyone (other than political groupies, the media, and masochists) will pay a lot of attention to politics, including their local politics, is immediately after the conventions in September. That would be a great time to roll out a unified message against the Democrats.

That does mean that someone is going to have to corral the McCain campaign. He can't continue to claim that he is a conservative, and then actively throw business and conservatives under the bus with his populist rhetoric. Again, he's living in the past (like the Democrats) if he thinks that doing such things will create amore with the press. They're behind Obama now, and nothing that John McCain can do will change that. Together, we have to go over the press directly to the people to be successful. Furthermore, voters got rid of the GOP in 2006 because they felt that the Republicans were acting like Democrats, rather than acting like the Republicans they promised to be. And if a voter is given a choice between a Republican who acts like a Democrat, versus a real Democrat - they'll usually go with the Democrat.

Remember, the GOP was successful after the disaster that was Jimmy Carter and that Democratic Congress. The Democrats are offering, at the top of the ticket, another Jimmy Carter. While Barack Obama is as close as the Democrats have ever come to an orator like Ronald Reagan, after the teleprompter goes off, there's no substance. Obama has proven to be a terrible extemporaneous speaker - his campaign always has to go out and correct something contradictory that he's said. That should be pointed out by everyone in the GOP loudly and often.

Down ticket, the Democrats aren't much better. They ran on change in 2006, and it can be successfully argued that the country has gone downhill since they took over Congress. The greatest national success that we've had since the elections of 2006 is on the issue that the Republicans and the President defeated the Dems on - the Democrats' attempted surrender in the Iraq war. The Dems are fond of saying that the Republicans are embracing the "failed policies of the past". It's time for the GOP to reach out and steal that phrase - it's the Democrats who want to take us back to the "failed policies of the past". They tried to cause a Vietnam with the Iraq War, and were stopped by the Republicans. Voters like winners, not losers. Their proposals for fighting the War on Terror go back to the September 10th mindset - even Obama's just named advisers are a throwback to the Clinton Administration, which brought us 9/11. And their tax proposals are straight out of the Carter years.

This election will all depend on creating a number of simple, repeatable messages - and hammering them home over and over again. That takes coordination and teamwork. Look for no help from the press. And the Democrats will vastly outspend the Republicans from top to bottom, so it's important that the GOP spending be targeted and effective. There will be no room for mistakes.    

We awoke this morning to the reports that a compromise has been reached between the Bush Administration and Congress on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The best reporting that I've seen on this so far is from the Wall Street Journal's Siobhan Gorman (Deal Set on Domestic Spy Powers). The best (and most humorous) analysis that I've see is at RedState by Moe Lane (The FISA Controversy, in tedious Question and Answer form).

It really is a win for the Bush Administration, and a loss for the Democrats, including Barack Obama. The Dems have been screaming for years about this illegal domestic spying program - this bill puts the lie to that meme. It acknowledges that FISA warrants were never before required for eavesdropping suspects overseas, but that with new systems that routes world-wide communications through the United States, it was time to allow for FISA to be updated to reflect the realities of the latest technologies. The government will be allowed, in circumstances that dictate it, immediate authority to commence wiretaps as long as they notify the FISA Court within 7 days. The Court would then have 30 days to approve a warrant, during which time the surveillance can continue. The FISA bill also offers retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies who assisted the federal government post-9/11. The current lawsuits by liberal groups will be allowed to go forward, but will be dismissed upon the production of evidence that the companies were complying with the request of the federal government and the President.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the problem all along was the liberal base of the Democratic Party, and their minions in Congress:

The outcome was driven largely by the realities of election-year politics. Democrats, particularly more conservative ones, in vulnerable re-election races couldn't afford to appear to be dodging a big national-security issue. And many believed the law needed to be updated before surveillance orders expired in August. House Democratic leaders struggled for months to find a proposal their entire party could support but couldn't overcome splits between conservative and liberal Democrats -- some of whom are reacting angrily to the deal.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama will have to decide whether to support it and risk the wrath of his party's left wing, or vote against it and risk losing support from independents. One top Democratic lawmaker said the Democrats delayed the announcement by a couple of days, in part to give the presumptive nominee time to assess his position.

Note that last section: "One top Democratic lawmaker said the Democrats delayed the announcement by a couple of days, in part to give the presumptive nominee time to assess his position". Barack Obama is a man who wants to be President. Being President means that you have to be able to make split second decisions, yet Obama needed a few days to figure out what his position was! Talk about not ready for prime time...

Perhaps Obama is worried about statements like this from January, posted by Jane Hamsher on Firedoglake.com:

I strongly oppose retroactive immunity in the FISA bill.

Ever since 9/11, this Administration has put forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand.

The FISA court works. The separation of power works. We can trace, track down and take out terrorists while ensuring that our actions are subject to vigorous oversight, and do not undermine the very laws and freedom that we are fighting to defend.


No one should get a free pass to violate the basic civil liberties of the American people - not the President of the United States, and not the telecommunications companies that fell in line with his warrantless surveillance program. We have to make clear the lines that cannot be crossed.

That is why I am co-sponsoring Senator Dodd's amendment to remove the immunity provision. Secrecy must not trump accountability. We must show our citizens – and set an example to the world – that laws cannot be ignored when it is inconvenient.

A grassroots movement of Americans has pushed this issue to the forefront. You have come together across this country. You have called upon our leaders to adhere to the Constitution. You have sent a message to the halls of power that the American people will not permit the abuse of power – and demanded that we reclaim our core values by restoring the rule of law.


It's time for Washington to hear your voices, and to act. I share your commitment to this cause, and will stand with you in the fights to come. And when I am President, the American people will once again be able to trust that their government will stand for justice, and will defend the liberties that we hold so dear as vigorously as we defend our security.

I'm not sure why Obama needed to figure out his position - he's consistently voted against the revision of FISA for years. So I guess that means that Obama will be voting against this bill. Which would put him at odds with the vast majority of Americans, who supported this so-called "domestic spying" - even after the New York Times first exposed it. In fact, Americans were supporting the Bush Administration on this issue even in the New York Times own poll conducted shortly after their 'expose'.

Oh wait, since this particular wiretapping issue polls well with the American voters, perhaps he'll flip-flop and vote for the revision this time, saying something along the lines of "this revision isn't the revision that I thought I knew", or some such nonsense. If so, this is the type of flip-flopping on an issue dear to the Left's cold hearts, to go along with the Democrats' soon-to-be total capitulation on Iraq war funding, that will enrage their base. And as their base works more on emotion than intellect, they will inevitably carry this grudge all the way to election day. That will probably be true on both a Presidential and Congressional level.

So Obama and the Democrats are in a no-win situation, no matter how their mainstream media parses it. If they vote against it, they appear even weaker on national security than they already are. If they vote for it, their words and rhetoric are once again proven to be meaningless.

As for the Independents on whom it appears Election 2008 will hinge, words matter. Promises matter. And it's becoming more and more apparent that the words and the promises of the Democrats', and in particular Barack Obama's, mean nothing.

<!--StartFragment-->

Barack Obama has just released a video to his supporters, explaining his not too secret decision to forgo public campaign funding. That he did it himself, in a video, shows that he recognizes that he has significant exposure on this issue based upon previous public statements and promises.

Obama proffers that his rejection of over "$80 million in public funds" is a noble gesture. And he blames his decision on the 'facts' that 1) the public finance system is somehow broken, and 2) it's John McCain's fault. The esteemed Senator claims that McCain is a stooge of special interests with unlimited pockets, and that McCain's 527s are prepared to spend limitless amounts to libel and slander Obama. In fact, Obama claims that McCain is refusing to call off the 527s - and that his people must fight back!

This video is deeply disturbing to anyone who knows any facts about the present political environment. The special interest money isn't coming to the GOP - the overwhelming majority is flowing into the Democratic Party coffers. The reason is simple - the Democrats are the ones currently in power, and Obama is favored to win the Presidency. The overwhelming majority of 527s are Democrat and liberal funded - simply extensions of the Democratic Party. They were originally set up, and primarily funded by George Soros, to skirt the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law. In fact, Soros was seeding these groups at the same time he was donating and supporting McCain's reforms efforts in the Senate. Useful idiots, indeed.

Also, as has been reported earlier on American Thinker, Barack Obama has promised in writing that he would not only be a participant in the public finance system for the general election, but challenged others in the race to agree to it as well. John McCain was the only one to do so. Obama, at the time, knew that he was a good fundraiser on his own, but that didn't stop him from agreeing to refund any excess money in donations to the individual donors when he joined the public system for the general election. Here’s Obama, in his own, written words:

I have been a long-time advocate for public financing of campaigns combined with free television and radio time as a way to reduce the influence of moneyed special interests. I introduced public financing legislation in the Illinois State Senate, and am the only 2008 candidate to have sponsored Senator Russ Feingold's (DWI) bill to reform the presidential public financing system. In February 2007, I proposed a novel way to preserve the strength of the public financing system in the 2008 election. My plan requires both major party candidates to agree on a fundraising truce, return excess money from donors, and stay within the public financing system for the general election. My proposal followed announcements by some presidential candidates that they would forgo public financing so they could raise unlimited funds in the general election. The Federal Election Commission ruled the proposal legal, and Senator John McCain (r-AZ) has already pledged to accept this fundraising pledge. If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election. [emphasis added]

Meanwhile, the Democrats are attacking John McCain's attempts to level the playing field and opt out of the public financing system that he and Obama had previously agreed to participate in. They've launched their attacks on two fronts. First, they have filed a suit against the FEC for not investigating their claim that McCain's use of donations as a pledge to obtain a loan to keep his campaign afloat was illegal - and allege that McCain can't opt out of the public financing system until the FEC rules on his case. Which brings us to the second front - the FEC isn't functioning because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is refusing to confirm new commissioners, thus insuring that there can be no quorum on the FEC. Without a quorum, there can't be any votes. Without any votes, the FEC can't conduct its oversight duties. So the Democratic Party is suing the FEC because of actions (or inactions) that the Democratic Party itself is actively causing. The Democrats are gaming the system. It's brilliant - and totally crooked.

Obama, in being as slick as Bill Clinton ever dreamed of being, did make one mistake, however. In his first comment to his supporters on the video, Obama stated as fact that the public finance system is broken. John McCain should immediately come out, point out that Obama has flip-flopped on this issue, but agree to take Obama at his word - that the system is broken. Then announce that in the spirit of fair play, and since Obama backed out of their public finance agreement first, then he will back out as well.

And let Obama and the Democrats chew on that for a while.

<!--EndFragment-->