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Obama and lobbyists: When the response ad writes itself

Submitted by Soren Dayton on Wed, 07/30/2008 - 09:14
in

This morning, Barack Obama's campaign woke to a headline that might have made the strategy guys nervous. Roll Call ran a piece entitled "Lobbyists Give to Obama Campaign" with the even better subtitle "Despite Policy, Their Checks Clear".

"So what?" you might ask.

When Obama was busy with his post-February primary losing streak, he ran ads against Hillary Clinton attacking her over this issue. "Obama doesn't take money from lobbyists, but Hillary does. Not in the pocket of special interests." I never understood how this was supposed to help him win the votes of people who support corrupt machine politicians like Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA). Working class Democratic voters don't care about this issue. But they care about liars.

So now, imagine the response ad that McCain would run.

First it starts with one of Obama's statements about not taking money from lobbyists. Perhaps even using Obama's own ad.

Then, put up headlines about him taking -- and asking for -- money from the spouses of lobbyists. (by the way, that's another brilliantly titled piece "Obama's K-street Project')

And then one his former staffers emailed DC lobbying firms demanded contracts.

And now it turns out that he even takes money from lobbyists. "despite policy, checks clear."

And then you flash up the headline "Obama's Lobbyist Connection", from Michael Isikoff's piece earlier this year.

And then throw in Obama breaking his pledge on public financing. (I am sure that there's a good headline here)

Then it ends with something like "Barack Obama: You can't trust what he says"

The words need to be improved, of course. But the point is that the material is there to undermine his character and his trustworthiness, Obama's only real assets in this race. And you do it at the same time as you rip off the "reformer" mask, a fundamental part of his "change" mantra.

 

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Comments

Not such a good idea...

Submitted by justinpgardner on Wed, 07/30/2008 - 10:19.

Thanks for the link to the story. I posted about it on Donklephant. But maybe you didn't read the last bit...

""Because of a law championed by Sen. Obama, lobbyists are now required to disclose their contributions, which gives us another chance to make sure we haven’t taken any money from lobbyists,” Vietor said. “Any contributions from lobbyists that weren’t already returned will be soon.”

Would McCain really want to make and run an ad to find out that all of those contributions have since  been returned, and then see Obama come up with a counter ad that highlights the hundreds of thousands McCain has taken? I highly doubt it.

$15,000 is a drop in the bucket and it's already being returned. You can be sure of that.

Obama lied already about not taking money

Submitted by Freedoms Truth on Wed, 07/30/2008 - 14:34.

in the first place. Why would you trust his campaign's promise to return it after having done that?

I think when you add this to his broken promise on campaign funding for the general election, plus the millions Obama took from oil executives and the millions more from pharma execs, you've got proof enough of Obama's say-one-thing do-another character on campaign finance.

I dont think he should be attacked for being especially corrupt - he's not, he's doing what every politician does.  And that's the point, he should be criticized for his hypocrisy in pretending he's different when he's not. He's attacked other politicians and pretended to be different and better ... and he ends up doing what what all the politicians have done. The fierce urgency of an election to win.

 

First, you have to believe he's lying...

Submitted by justinpgardner on Wed, 07/30/2008 - 16:41.

...and that's hardly evident from this story. Especially when you're dealing with literally millions of donations.

Because what you're saying is that his campaign decided to reject contributions from all lobbyists except 40? Moreover, the reason for this apparent "secret" switch was to net a whopping total of $15,000? Is that really your argument?

You can accuse him of doing anything to win, but this is a really poor example of it. And, again, Soren's position that this would make a great attack ad just doesn't make sense.

Except Obama lied already about campaign finance

Submitted by Freedoms Truth on Wed, 07/30/2008 - 17:36.

when he broke his promise last November to seek public financing if his opponent, and then in mid-June, he did the political expedient thing and jumped out of public financing. He did it to have a money advantage. It was also a major flip-flop.

Asked last September on a questionnaire from the Midwest Democracy Network whether he would "participate in the presidential public financing system" if his "major opponents agree to forgo private funding in the general election campaign," Obama checked the box marked "yes,"  

http://www.blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2008/06/19/the-proble...

"Obama's stark abandonment of a pledge he repeatedly made during the Democratic primaries has dinged his reputation as a government reformer, and it clearly gave his critics ammunition to attack his character and paint him as a Democratic flip-flopper."" - Jake Tapper

At the time, the defense from Obama-philes was that his promise wasnt really a promise and, well he had no 527s like those evil Republicans so he had to do it:  "Obama clearly has said to his supporters that they should NOT donate to the democratic side 527s." said one comment.

Except its not true. He had supporters in California use a 527 as a loophole, meanwhile he was attacking Edwards on 527s. AND - Obama has lobbyist bundlers. Has quite a few. This is more than a few innocent mistakes. There is a pattern. Do one thing, say another.  There is mendacity in his hypocrisy. 

See this post for more on the 527s:

http://no-bama.blogspot.com/2008/06/obamas-campaign-finance-tricks.html

Obama has been fooling people with his phony claims that he does NOT take corporate and special interest money. Obama gets twice as much from "Big Oil" than McCain does. He met Soros in late 2006 and is in Soros billionaire pocket. He's put hedge fund operators on his economic team. He put DC insiders as his VP vetters. As the data shows, he's got more bundlers than anyone else. He even had 527s set up to get around contribution limits.

Obama's Campaign Funding, 2008
Total Raised: $264,492,301
Bundlers 358
Lobbyist Bundlers: 14

Obama is using the "527" campaign funding loophole. It is a legal funding loophole that is not counted in his official donations. Hillary and McCain reject the use of 527's but Obama welcomes the use of the loophole. McCain actually made a law that made the loophole illegal. Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court said 527's should be legal. McCain's law is no longer valid. The only way to really close the loophole is with a constitutional amendment.

A real funny thing is Obama criticized Edwards about funding while Obama was using the 527 loophole. It just proves Obama is a complete hypocrite.
Obama's supporters get around money limit (August 2007).

He doesn't tell the public he is using a campaign fund loophole. he doesn't tell people he's got bundlers including lobbyist bundlers. He doesn't tell people he promised to get into public financing if his opponent would and now have broken his word.

 

Or this, as a stand for truth in advertising

Submitted by Steve Roth on Wed, 07/30/2008 - 17:37.

42 lobbyists, mostly working for nonprofits or formerly working for nonprofits, have given the immense sum of $15,000 to the Obama campaign.

This emerged on July 30, the day when lobbyists were were required to file their disclosure forms. As of 3:23 pm PDT on that day, the Obama campaign had only returned two of those donations. The campaign has said it will return the others.

440 lobbyists for unknown corporations have given an unknown amount to the McCain campaign, which has no intention of returning any of it.

Is that a somewhat more accurate precis of Roll Call's story?

$18 million from lawyers/obbyist sector to Obama

Submitted by Freedoms Truth on Wed, 07/30/2008 - 18:06.

Via www.opensecrets.org, total sector contributions:

Lawyers & Lobbyists TOTAL: $68,333,394 DEMS: $51,563,974 REPUBS: $16,746,470

One of Obama's tricks has been to get  lawyers from lobbying lawfirms to contribute in subterfuge ways - spouses, other non-registered-lobbyist partners, etc. as noted here:

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/obamas-k-street-project-2007-03-28.html

Mike Williams, the director of government relations at Credit Suisse Securities, said of the network of lobbyists supporting Obama: “I would imagine that it’s as large as the Clinton list,” in reference to rival presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who is an entrenched favorite of the Washington Democratic establishment.

All Obama is putting off-limits are registered-lobbyist direct contributions. They can still be big-money 'bundlers' for him and he has quite a few. And the contributions will be marked based on the person who is giving it, even if it goes through a lobbyist bundler. Many of these contributions are from K-street law firms. you can detect the size of this network by looking at the lawyers and lobbyist sector support for Obama on opensecrets.org:

Lawyers/Law Firms$18,865,224

The real story under the iceberg is not these few mistakes, and the fact that Obama is not returning money from lobbyists, but the ongoing concerted effort to look clean while still having an operation that is extracting money from the people working in this sector.

Other K Street players working to build momentum for Obama are former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), a consultant for Alston & Bird; Broderick Johnson, president of Bryan Cave Strategies LLC; Mark Keam, the lead Democratic lobbyist at Verizon; Jimmy Williams, vice president of government affairs for the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America; Thomas Walls, vice president of federal public affairs at McGuireWoods Consulting; and Francis Grab, senior manager at Washington Council Ernst & Young.

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/obamas-k-street-project-2007-03-28.html

Some older data comparing  for the 2008 Presidential campaign, in money taken from just ONE sector (Lawyers & Lobbyists) Barack has already taken over 17 MILLION Bucks. Second ONLY to HRC.

Sector: Lawyers & Lobbyists
Hillary Clinton: $17,645,358
Barack Obama: $17,500,375
John Edwards: $7,824,512
John McCain: $5,661,398
Rudy Guiliani: $4,507,828

Okay...

Submitted by Steve Roth on Wed, 07/30/2008 - 19:14.

So Obama gets money from lawyers. And he's raising far more, from far more contributors, than McCain. And some lobbyists support him.

But if money=corruption, which is often does, and if big money=big corruption, then why support McCain, who's far more reliant on big-money donors than Obama is. And whose inner and not-so-inner circle is rife with lobbyists--to a far greater extent than Obamas.

I mean, if these things are bad things, aren't they just as bad or worse when McCain does them far more than Obama?

OBAMA=HYPOCRITE

Submitted by Freedoms Truth on Thu, 07/31/2008 - 10:18.

I dont think money=corruption. Neither McCain nor Obama are good nor bad on this - both are doing the typical politician thing, raising the money they need to win.

I just think OBAMA=HYPOCRITE.

A great example is this phony Obama talking point you parrot:

"why support McCain, who's far more reliant on big-money donors than Obama is."

Obama has more max contributors than McCain. Do the math, 55% of Obama's money is from max contributors and he's raised more than twice what McCain has. Ergo, Obama has more big-money donors. Plus Obama has dirty Soros billionaire money and is relying on multiple secretive billionaire-liberal activist funds (some channelled to his ACORN friends and other groups) to help him out.

Really, how much kool aid did you have to drink to defend this flip-flopping hypocrite Obama?

Oh, that averages $357 per lobbyist

Submitted by Steve Roth on Wed, 07/30/2008 - 17:45.

You're really scraping here...

Semantics and Hypocrisy

Submitted by texicali on Thu, 07/31/2008 - 00:27.

Obama is accepting contributions from Lobbyists whether they are bundlers or not.....just one more set of smoke and mirrors he's running up the flagpole....Obama is the candidate who stated he would not take money from Lobbyists McCain NEVER made that statement....Obama is the candidate who stated he would take public financing then backed out....if you're going to talk oranges then talk oranges....dont mix oranges and apples....the great thing about the opensecrets.org site is you can find this information much easier than reading through page after page of FEC filings....if the McCain campaign, the RNC and other GOP groups do NOT pound this message from now until election day and hang that and the other albatrosses around his neck we will not have a good outcome come November....fwiw I work on these reports and am very familiar in how to read them.....I know how to find info on the FEC site but when I was specifics to an industry, etc I use opensecrets.org  it's much more informative

Opensecrets

Submitted by Freedoms Truth on Thu, 07/31/2008 - 10:31.

.I know how to find info on the FEC site but when I was specifics to an industry, etc I use opensecrets.org  it's much more informative

Please share what you find on Obama. Opensecrets is a great site, and as you say, the GOP should pound on this issue. Obama has broken promises and made hypocritical claims, and should be held to account for his phoniness.

Well Said Soren

Submitted by texicali on Thu, 07/31/2008 - 01:01.

That would be a great ad.....hopefully coming soon to a channel near everyone on or offline