'First They Came For the Grocers'
Blech. Clearly Bush is not against free speech, and clearly an attempt to regulate soft money contributions by 'shadowy groups' is nowhere near the same as the Jewish internment, Kristallnacht, and the Holocaust. Such subtleties are missed however, but it is not surprising. This is, after all, the same sphere of the body politic that has been saying Bush is Hitler for the last four years. What did you expect?
Second, let's all try not to break out into hysterics by the audacity of this position. In the past week, the Democrats have attempted to sue to halt free speech activities, have attempted to shut down the operation of the independent press, have written threatening letters to television networks, and have had their surrogates write threatening letters to stores selling speech products that they do not like. First they came for your sense of irony, and I am not even going to mention the Democrats caging their protesters at the DNC and doing everything they can to keep Ralph Nader off the ballot anywhere.
Similarly disingenuous are attempts to point out that Republicans have in the past been benefactors of 527's. The entire point of the McCain-Feingold CFR was to stop the abuses and misuses on both sides of the political aisle. Am I the only one who remembers the plaintive wails of John McCain in front of any live microphone, bemoaning the fact that all this 'unregulated money has corrupted us all.'
Furthermore, were Bush/Cheney supporters to single-handedly stop using 527's, it would be tantamount to unilateral disarmament- which, ifyou think for a second, is precisely the rallying cry the Democrats use very time they are up to no good. 'Why- we must do all these things we say we are against- we can't unilaterally disarm and give up the fight.' And so on ad nauseum.
Was I in favor of McCain-Feingold? No. Was I in favor of any attempts to regulate free speech? NO, and neither were the majority of my Republican brethren. In fact, you might do a quick google on Mitch McConnell and Campaign Finance Reform, and find out what Atrios and his compatriots on the left had to say about his 'obstructionist' attitude towards cleaning up the political climate in years past.
At any rate, it is amusing that while the left-wing bloggers are seizing upon the 'Bush is against free speech meme,' it is apparently lost on them that their leaders still believe Bush's position is not hard-line enough:
The Kerry campaign said Bush did not go far enough. "The moment of truth came and went and the president still could not bring himself to do the right thing," said Kerry's vice presidential running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. "George Bush needs to take responsibility and demand that the ad come off the air."
The Kerry/Edwards campaign then went forward with a commercial fradulently claiming the Swift Vets are a part of the Bush campaign. Apparently, Edwards wants Bush to condemn only those ads that don't puppet the Kerry/Edwards line, leaving all other 527's in place with their hundreds of millions of dollars to attack Bush/Cheney, or he wants Bush to condemn all ads and 527's and doubly condemn those that are mean to Kerry/Edwards. You take your pick.
The former option dictates that you must recognize that the Democrats are hypocrites, the latter that they are just idiots. I would suggest they are a combination of both, and I expect we will have to wait 24 hours for another Kerry/Edwards poll to dictate the new talking points. At that time, we should expect the left-wing of the blogosphere and the Kerry/Edwards leadership to be back on the same sheet of music.
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