Here’s my most recent Post column, in which a longtime supporter of campaign-finance reform argues that the FEC should keep its hands off the Web:
The campaign-finance-reform lobby is launching a new attack on one of our most basic rights.
For more than 200 years, Americans have had the right to operate printing presses without having to get a license from the government. The First Amendment was written to protect against just such depredations of freedom of speech, hallmarks of monarchical tyranny.
…
Take the case of Fired Up. The network of progressive, Democratic-leaning Web sites is petitioning the Federal Election Commission for protection from the nation’s campaign-finance regulations.
The FEC has ruled that big-media companies like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fox News, CNN, CBS, etc. enjoy what’s called a “press exemption” from McCain-Feingold — allowing them to support or attack candidates without being prosecuted for making illegal corporate campaign contributions. But it has yet to grant any such protection to blogs and other Web sites not considered part of the traditional media.
The “cleanies” want to make sure they never get it. Thus, the country’s leading campaign-finance-reform groups — Democracy 21, the Campaign Legal Center and the Center for Responsive Politics (all recipients of millions of dollars from left-wing foundations) — are lining up against Fired Up.
“There’s a supreme irony in their viewpoint,” Fired Up founder Roy Temple told me yesterday.
Temple worked alongside Gov. Mel Carnahan in Missouri to pass campaign-finance reform in that state, and he worked with Sen. Jean Carnahan (the governor’s widow) to pass McCain-Feingold. So, he’s no anti-campaign-finance-reform fanatic. But he believes the ‘Net has the power to be more important than any reform.
“Political money is like water, it will find the path of least resistance,” he said. “The more we have a vibrant civic space on the Internet, you will ultimately do more to rebalance the political calculus in this country than any effort to try to control political money.”
Fired Up! America can be found at the link, and that site has links to some state sites.
Isn’t there a stunning hypocrisy in Democrats and their allies in saying they don’t want McCain-Feingold to regulate blogs? In essence, what they say is that they are all for regulating speech — but not their own speech. And why don’t they want the internet regulated? its because it allows their allies (read: liberal Democrats and their special interest groups who are a step ahead in the online world) to have an exemption that other groups cannot.
It’s the same reason why Democrats love campaign finance reform (limit soft money, which Republicans raise more of) but balk when campaign finance reform hurts them (ie, why paycheck protection to help union workers get their dues taken from them to financially support candidates (almost universally Democrats), even while rank-and-file members vote 40% Republican).
As someone who opposes McCain-Feingold, I support extending it to the Internet — if only to teach the Democrats a lesson. You guys want to regulate free speech? Fine, but that means your free speech will be regulated too. How do you like ‘dem apples?
Plus, to say that the exemption for the New York Times applies to DailyKos or RedState is absurd. What if I form an organization (Democrats Suck) via a website, run a blog (DemocratsSuck.com), but then use the blog to publish a newsletter and mail it to people in a state to tell them to read my blog where I say that Democrsats Suck. And in that newsletter, I strongly attack some Democrats for Sucking. And then, what if that same organization uses the money they raised online to run TV ads promoting my website (Go Visit Democrats Suck.com where you find out why John Kerry is a French Toadie who Sucks)? At what point did I cross the line from being a website/journalism exemption to being a political agent.
God, all campaign finance reform sucks.