McCain sets himself up the bomb

Kimberley Strassel:

...McCain-Feingold’s biggest “accomplishment” these past five years has been the flowering of those shadowy operations known as 527s, which abide by no rules. Democrats have fine-tuned these outfits, and are gearing up to unload hundreds of millions in negative advertising on none other than Mr. McCain...

In light of all this, the McCain camp has come up with a plan that it hopes will tighten the score. It has filed to create the “McCain Victory ’08” fund, a “hybrid legal structure” that includes the campaign, the Republican National Committee, and [committees in?] four battleground states.

Mr. McCain’s own law restricts individuals to donations of $2,300 per candidate, but those individuals can also contribute much bigger amounts to different party funds. So, with “McCain Victory ’08,” donors can write a check for $70,000.

Technically, the money is divided up between Mr. McCain, the RNC ($28,500) and the four states ($10,000 each). In reality, it will in effect all be used for the candidate’s benefit.

Strassel laments that McCain wouldn’t be faced with the prospect of weaseling around his own law if he “had fought instead for simple transparency– and trusted Americans to decide how much to give and to whom.”

But that’s water under the bridge.  Thanks to Congress, George Bush, and the Supreme Court, the law is the law, and the McCain campaign is attempting to get around the law’s $2,300 limit by gaming the system. Should ordinary folks try tricks like this, the government is quick to register its disapproval; as Bill Quick pointed out (in another context):

...Law enforcement views attempts to game the system as evidence of a crime if not a crime in itself. (Search the first link for “structure,” as in structured deposit or structured transaction. Search the second link for the Structured Transactions section, about 40% of the way down.)

If Mr. McCain doesn’t possess the integrity to instruct his supporters to abide by the spirit of his own law, maybe this finagling should be referred for prosecution.

(Hah.  Not likely!)

But what is likely is that the MSM and all of those evil Democrat 527s will be all over this, come next fall.  

Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 16:03:04 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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