Saturday, September 22, 2007

McCain-Feingold Follies   [David Freddoso]

Human Events's John Gizzi asked Fred Thompson about campaign-finance reform. Here was part of his answer:

The central part of that was getting rid of soft money. I'm for that. I come from the real world where it's a bad idea for someone to have the ability to give hundreds of thousands of dollars to someone who had decision-making power over you...

So I'm for the limitation of soft money. And I was able, through my amendment, to raise the hard money limit...But the part that has not worked out, that really was a mistake, were the attempts to place limitations on campaign ads in certain parts of the process...It hasn't worked out the way it should have, and I don't think that part of was such a good idea....

This is a lot like the answer he gave on Laura Ingraham, although it is better. But the answer is still problematic — it is a logically inconsistent answer. You CANNOT limit soft money without placing those restrictions on free speech. This is why they put the limitations into the bill. Let me explain.

If you try to ban soft money, but you don't place restrictions on ads by outside groups, then thousands of outside groups will simply spring up and start airing "issue-ads" that subtly promote or attack candidates. Some of us just call this "The First Amendment," but the writers of McCain-Feingold realized that this would defeat the purpose of the soft-money ban. That's why the restrictions on ads close to primary and general elections was included in the McCain-Feingold bill.

So let's be really clear here: You cannot support a soft-money ban but reject the speech limitations in McCain-Feingold. Fred is making a mistake by not just taking the line that he made a mistake on this bill.

09/22 03:30 PMShare