This is really unbelievable. Today's NY Times tells us the McCain campaign "stepped up its criticism of Mr. Obama" on the issue of campaign finance.
Seriously, how can the NY Times or any publication even listen to the McCain campaign when it is in the midst of breaking the campaign finance laws? McCain is scamming the system but has the audacity to attack Obama. Even worse, the so-called brain trust of campaign finance advocates are focused on Obama's "commitment" to campaign finance. So McCain is breaking the law. Obama is not only adhering to the law, he won't take PAC money or contributions from lobbyists. But the concern is Obama of Joan Claybrook and Fred Wertheimer. It's bizarro world.:
“You ought to be able to run a campaign for two months on $85 million,” said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, which lobbies for stricter campaign finance laws. She called Mr. Obama’s recent remarks “a very bad signal.”
“This whole idea started with Senator Obama, and we think he and whoever the Republican nominee is ought to follow through,” said Fred Wertheimer, founder of the advocacy group Democracy 21.
Um, Joan, "a very bad signal" is breaking the campaign finance law. That's what your champion, John McCain, is doing. He is making a mockery of the system.
Obama's campaign shouldn't listen for a second to any of these campaign finance types now. By ignoring the McCain scandal, they've lost any credibility.
Noam Scheiber at The Plank explains the situation pretty succinctly in his post, "McCain May Be Screwed":
Bottom line: Either McCain used the promise of public campaign funds as collateral for his loan, in which case he's locked himself into the public campaign finance system (and its strict spending limits) and is massively screwed until September. Or he didn't use potential public funds as collateral, which means he didn't have anything to offer as collateral, which means he received an improper loan. Neither one of those scenarios is very good for the Straight Talk Express.
