10.20.2008

McCain Campaign worried about small donations from millions of Americans

I've had enough. Now the campaign is complaining that millions of people are giving Obama a few bucks each. Micro donations through the internet should be protected, it's the best way to cut out special interests. After this election we are going to see a lot of this as the anti-political speech agenda that McCain has had for a long time. If there are agruments that micro donations should be restricted that don't disenfranchize Americans please let me know, I'd like to hear them. As it is, disenfranchizement is the only goal that limitations would gain. Here are some notes on a confrence call by McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis (Link to article) :

Obama is refusing to release any of his donors under $200.00 per person. Obviously in order to raise 150 million he's had to include hundreds of thousands possibly a million new donors.
It's important to note that this is the first campaign since the watergate era that has taken a primary fundraising effort and driven into general election. This is the first time that all primary funds could be used for general, this raises questions about whether his donors are qualified. Why isn't the Obama Campaign reporting them?
The RNC is going to update all their stuff online so you'll be able to search every donation that McCain AND RNC has ever raised.
What is Obama's excuse for not doing this? He has the technology.
During the primary Obama constantly badgered opponents. If he were the nominee and the Republican agreed, he'd take Government funds. But he didn't. His fundraising machine grew and grew; Nobody knows how or why.
He repeatedly made pledges to the public that he'd take government funds if the Republican candidate did. He looked in the camera and said, "I will call John McCain, and I will negotiate with John McCain..."
He never called John McCain, and we all learned in a blog post that he'd forgo public financing.
We need to have a public dialog about this.
We don't want to find out there has been impropriety in the donations he's received. If there's problems we need to find out about them and publish them. There have been discussions between Obama's campaign and the FEC to clean up his donations. People on the Gaza strip have been buying teeshirts. It's against the law.
We could go on with more and more examples of these and that's just from the disclosed ones.
We want sunshine and transparency on this issue. The RNC has filed a complaint with the FEC to see if they can get to the bottom of these three hundred million in "secret donations" I say secret because I have no doubt that the vast majority are probably legitimate but they are being kept secret by the Obama campaign for no good reason. I looked everywhere I could to find out why they don't disclose these and other than the explanation during the primary that there were "Technical Limitations" on doing it I can't find any explanation. They have the resources to do it.
The RNC says they can make all their donations publicly searchable in 24 hours. If the RNC can do it, why can't the Obama campaign do it?
To finish up: this pattern of non-disclosure & setting his own rules is consistent with what we've seen from Senator Obama. Doesn't answer ACORN questions. Just puts out enough information to get through each day. We dribble out information.
Where's the disclosure? RElationships. I don't want this call to devolve into a relationship call but "Just one of my friends in the neighborhood" but now we know Ayers had a much deeper much more involved relationship with Obama.
When will we learn more about the least experience Presidential nominee from the Democratic party?
One report from FEC says this could result in the largest fine ever.
Obviously Obama wants to obey the law. Obviously his campaign wants to adhere to requirements.
One other disturbing aspect of this issue is that because John McCain took funds, their campaign will be audited by the FEC. Because Obama didn't take funds, there's a "lingering question" as to whether or not there will be an audit of his fundraising. That raises "larger spectre" over voluntary cooperation that Obama isn't showing.
Congrats to Obama on money raised, but shame on them for not letting the public see where coming from.

1 comment:

  1. Par for the course from Sen. McCain & friends: focusing on trifles while everything else is in a rail car careening straight to Hell.

    It used to be that Republicans got more small (read individual) donations than Democrats. The GOP really has tanked this time. It remains to seen whether or not they will learn anything from the electoral thrashing that seems to be in the offing.

    Will you be furiously writing in Whigs while I am trying to locate Libertarians who managed to make it past Our Fair State's ballot laws?

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