McCain to Appear on ABC’s ‘This Week’ on Sunday. Five questions Stephanopoulos should ask the Presidential hopeful…

The website of ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos tells us Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain and Sen. Chuck Hagel will be joining George this Sunday, February 4th.

While the interview will focus on President Bush’s plan for a troop surge in Iraq, below are five questions Stephanopoulos should ask the Senate’s “chief campaign finance reformer” while he has him in front of the cameras…

1)  As a frontrunner for the 2008 Republican nomination for President, will you, Senator McCain, campaign within the presidential public financing system or is it your intention to abandon that system in favor of more campaign dollars?  (Note: Stephanopoulos has asked McCain a similar question before.  The Senator dodged the question.)

2)  Senator McCain, as you seek the portray yourself as the conservative candidate, why on earth do you plan to introduce legislation in the 110th Congress to “further clamp down on independent ‘527′ groups?”  In other words, with conservatives almost unanimously opposed to your dubious campaign finance “reform” agenda, why would you sponsor legislation to further muzzle political speech?

3)  If it is your intention to abandon the limitations of the public financing system as you seek the GOP nomination, isn’t that hypocritical?  You are responsible for the passage of the McCain-Feingold bill, widely considered one of the greatest legislative assaults on the free speech and association rights of the American people ever passed by Congress. Now, you are vowing to further muzzle political speech in the 110th Congress.  Why do you seek to muzzle everyone’s voice but your own?

McCain’s answer to public financing question may be made for him…

The New York Daily News today reported that John McCain “has less than half a million bucks in his campaign account.”

 The story ran under the headline, “McCain war chest running on empty”

The report states…

“Between Nov. 15 and Dec. 31, McCain (R-Ariz.) raised $660,000 and raided $1 million from his Senate reelection account to his presidential fund, but he spent more than $1.2 million.”

At this rate, he may be forced (of course against his will) into the presidential public financing system as he seeks the GOP nomination.  Especially considering where his competitors stand.

Read on…

‘Remember when John McCain was decrying the corrupting influence of big money in our elections?’

Donald Lambro, chief political correspondent for The Washington Times, has a great column today titled, “Big checks fill campaign coffers.”

In the column, Lambro points out that…

“[S]ince McCain and his band of reformers passed the stringent new law [McCain-Feingold], here’s what happened: The amount of contributions an individual can give to each candidate per election has jumped from $1,000 to $2,300; all of that so-called big money in the past has grown bigger, with presidential candidates talking about raising $100 million this year alone to prepare for the 2008 primaries; and McCain and some of his fellow reformers say they doubt they’ll abide by the limits in the presidential public-financing system they enacted into law.”

Lambro goes further in correctly pointing to McCain’s hypocrisy on the campaign finance issue…

“Such are the unintended consequences of hyperventilating reformers who promise that if we just exert the power of the state to prevent people from freely giving to whomever they wish, we can take big money out of our elections. But we now find it’s very hard for these lawmakers to live by the rules they want to impose on the rest of us.” [emphasis ours]  

Indeed, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves.  As a matter of fact, that is exactly what we have been saying!

‘$traight Talk’ Petition is now live…

The “$traight Talk” petition is now live.  To sign the petition urging John McCain to “talk straight” with the American people on whether he will abide by the Presidential Public Financing system as he seeks the 2008 GOP nomination, click here.

One Week and Counting…

It’s been exactly seven days, and counting, since the Center for Individual Freedom asked Senator McCain to ‘talk straight’ with the American people on whether he plans to campaign for President within the public financing system or abandon that system in favor of more campaign dollars.  

His only response to date has been to publicly vow to push legislation to muzzle even more political speech.   While McCain is out there trying to raise an estimated $500 million to support his bid for the White House, he wants to silence ‘527’ organizations – ironically groups he created through Congress’s passage of the McCain-Feingold bill.  That is not ‘straight talk,’ it’s the height of hypocrisy!

It appears that McCain wants to shut everyone out of the political process but himself.

The First Amendment is very clear in stating, “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech…”  That seems to have been lost on Senator McCain as he seeks to further restrict the free speech and association rights of the American people.  At the same time, Senator McCain appears to be applying a double standard with his own presidential campaign.  While he shuns “money in politics,” he continues to refuse to answer the public financing question. 

The American people want “straight talk,” not “double talk.”

This from National Journal’s “The Hotline”

On January 29, National Journal’s “The Hotline,” ran this little snippet…

McCain-O-Crite?

The conservative, VA-based, Center for Individual Freedom has written to McCain asking if he “will abandon the limits of the current presidential public-financing system to try to raise more money than his rivals.” CIF pres. Jeffrey Mazzella: “Senator McCain has made so-called ‘clean elections’ a staple of his political career. Yet, now that Senator McCain is the front-runner for the GOP nomination, he continues to evade the direct question of whether he will abide by the very campaign finance limitations he advocates” (Arizona Republic, 1/28).

Human Events: McCain’s ‘Double Talk’

Highlighting CFIF’s activity to hold Senator McCain to his “Straight Talk” mantra, the conservative publication Human Events today published a story titled:  “McCain’s ‘Double Talk’ Hit From Both Sides”

The article is posted here.

CFIF Responds to McCain’s Plan to Introduce Legislation to Further Muzzle Political Speech

In response to Senator McCain’s announcement late last week to push legislation to further regulate the speech of so-called “527” organizations (groups like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and America Coming Together, which were active in the 2004 elections), the Center for Individual Freedom fired off another letter to the Senate’s chief “campaign finance reformer.”

CFIF’s letter is posted here.

In it, CFIF points out that Americans – particularly Conservatives – are outraged at McCain’s plans to further muzzle political speech.  Indeed, such action is a slap in the face to the American people.

The letter reads, in part…

Arizona Republic: ‘McCain passing on public cash?’

On Sunday, January 28, the Arizona Republic, Senator McCain’s home-state newspaper, included the following headline:  ‘McCain passing on public cash?’

The full article can be found here.

The story references the fact that Senator McCain last year, “as he began eyeing a run for the White House in 2008,” removed his name as a sponsor of legislation he’d co-sponsored since 2003 to strengthen the presidential public financing system. 

According to the article…

Amid Question of Flip-Flopping, Senator McCain Announces He Will Introduce Legislation to Further Regulate ‘527’ Organizations

Responding to media inquiries prompted by a January 25 CFIF letter to Senator McCain in which the conservative organization asks the Senator to clearly state his intentions about whether he will abide by the presidential public financing limitations in his bid for the 2008 GOP nomination, Senator McCain’s office announced a plan to introduce legislation in the 110th Congress designed to “further clamp down on independent ‘527’ organizations.”

We thought he was trying to appeal to Conservatives.  Apparently not!

The announcement appeared in an article originally published on January 26 in The Politico, which can be found at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0107/2482.html.  

“Yes, it is McCain’s bill and McCain will introduce it this Congress,” Mark Salter, McCain’s chief of staff, wrote in an e-mail [to The Politico].