John McCain has also opted out of public financing for his campaign (but you wouldn’t know it).
When Barack Obama opts of out pubic financing for his campaign, the media screams bloody murder. Why isn’t the corporate media admitting that John McCain has done the same thing? Arianna Huffington explains:
Cut to Super Tuesday, when McCain had the Republican nomination all but wrapped up. Suddenly, he didn’t want to be bound by that $54 million limit, so his campaign did a 180 and opted back out of the public financing system.
But as David Mason, the Republican-appointed chair of the FEC, has pointed out, you can’t just unilaterally opt out — especially after securing a loan based on having opted in. The response of the McCain campaign is quite simply to ignore Mason. And because the FEC currently lacks a quorum (thanks to stalling tactics by that human roadblock to reform, Mitch McConnell) that’s where things stand, pending a ruling on a lawsuit filed by the DNC.
Yet few in the Swift Boat Media saw fit to point out this glaring contradiction in McCain’s cries about broken commitments made to the American people. Indeed, as Media Matters points out, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the CBS Evening News, NBC’s Nightly News, Fox News’ Special Report, and CNN all dutifully reported McCain’s “Big deal” claim without mentioning McCain’s campaign finance chicanery.
About the Author: Erich Vieth is an iconoclastic attorney and writer living in the Shaw neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri. He and his wife have two daughters, aged 8 and 10.
