If you dont like my characterization, look to NRO, who said his signing of the bill was craven and showed lack of gumption. Kinda like lack of intestinal fortitude. And how did signing McCain Feingold unify the GOP??
"Campaign-finance reform is a hot-button for the Republican base. It is that rare perfect storm of revulsion shared by social conservatives, business, libertarians and originalist legal scholars. Collectively, they see political speech, political association, and the citizen’s right to petition government squelched by an incumbent-coddling, big-government scheme that betrays freedoms basic to a functioning democracy. Yet, in the most craven act of his administration, President Bush signed BCRA into law despite taking pains to express “reservations about the constitutionality of the broad ban on issue advertising, which restrains the speech of a wide variety of groups on issues of public import in the months closest to an election.”
The president rationalized this dereliction with the modern public official’s all-purpose dodge: abdication to the federal judiciary. “I expect,” he explained, “that the courts will resolve these legitimate legal questions as appropriate under the law.” And what of his own responsibility to resolve these questions as the principal officer sworn to defend the Constitution of the United States? Nope. It was, he said, up to the judges to do what he lacked the gumption to do: reject infringement of the sovereign’s — the people’s — fundamental right to criticize their government."
article.nationalreview.com |
