Press

The venerable Capitol Hill publication Roll Call has long editorially supported the cause of campaign finance reform, but typically with a nuance and skepticism lacking from the simplistic editorials of such publications as the New York Times or USA Today, and it has for years covered the issue with reporters such as Amy Keller and others who presented the issue in a fair and unbiased fashion.

Unfortunately, the paper’s recent hiring of Eliza Newlin Carney, formerly of National Journal, to cover this beat casts serious doubt on Roll Call’s ability to continue to provide unbiased coverage of the issue.

Today promises to bring more attention to a meeting of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) than quite possibly all previous meetings combined. The cause of this is comedian Stephen Colbert’s appearance today to answer questions regarding his advisory opinion request.

Originally intended as an ongoing comedy skit to mock the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, the Colbert SuperPAC gag has spun into something of a headache for the self-styled campaign finance ‘reform’ community. Several media outlets have begun to report on this. From today’s Politico comes this story by Ken Vogel:

Stephen Colbert’s running PAC shtick creates sticky mess

Advocates of reducing the power of money in politics thought they had found a champion in the unlikely person of Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert, whose ongoing shtick about forming a political action committee brought more attention to their cause than all their press releases, testimony and legal briefs combined.

As part of his effort to highlight – and parody – the impact of a 2010 Supreme Court decision opening new avenues for corporate money in elections, the satirist plans to testify Thursday in front of the Federal Election Commission about a very real legal request he filed that would allow his planned Colbert Super PAC to push the envelope on corporate political spending.

But the joke seems to be backfiring.

It is the silly season of the campaign, the time when desperate partisans resort to desperate measures.  Right now, the silly season is epitomized by the wild accusations of Think Progress, the web arm of the liberal activist group Center for American Progress, which has been launching accusations that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is funding its political activity with illegal foreign funds. 

We know that the Chamber isn’t spending foreign money on politics – or at least any sensible person knows it.  We know it in the same way that we know that Barack Obama was born in the U.S., even if we can’t prove it to the complete satisfaction of every birther out there.  The guilty until proven innocent, “prove a negative” approach of the October Disclosers is political fodder, not serious argument about which there is reasonable doubt.  Responsible experts in the field should not exacerbate the problem by suggesting that the “Disclosers” raise reasonable questions. 

JournoList, the listserve discussion group of left-leaning journalists and academics founded by Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein, is back in the news for allegedly helping the Obama campaign to deal with the controversy surrounding Reverend Jeremiah Wright in the 2008 campaign.

Michael Calderone of Politico first reported on JournoList in March of 2009, writing:

For the past two years, several hundred left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics have talked stories and compared notes in an off-the-record online meeting space called JournoList.

Proof of a vast liberal media conspiracy?

Not at all, says Ezra Klein, the 24-year-old American Prospect blogging wunderkind who formed JournoList in February 2007. “Basically,” he says, “it’s just a list where journalists and policy wonks can discuss issues freely.”

While many are expressing angst over the fact that JournoList members apparently attempted to plan and coordinate messaging in support of their favored candidate, then-Senator Barack Obama, we at the Center for Competitive Politics are not among them.

Imagine if the DISCLOSE Act had passed several months ago, and were now in place. Now imagine if the following ad—let’s say it were, hypothetically, Democracy 21 paying for the ad—had begun running today in Congressman Chris Van Hollen’s Maryland district, where he has a Sept. 14 primary:

“Announcer: Chris Van Hollen is leading an effort to pass reform legislation that is effective. He’s being challenged by interest groups in Washington, D.C. who do not want to disclose their donors while they make campaign-related expenditures.

Congressman Van Hollen is challenging this an anti-reform position, and now he’s being attacked for being too much of a reformer.

Call Congressman Van Hollen and tell him to continue to oppose the anti-reformers ‘Alice in Wonderland’ view of Washington DC.”

Now, imagine that instead of running an ad, the head of Democracy 21 were instead to simply get on the phone with a reporter from Roll Call writing an article about last week’s collapse of the DISCLOSE Act, and provide pretty much the same commentary to appear in a news story:

Wertheimer defended Van Hollen’s performance. “He is leading an effort to pass reform legislation that is effective, and he’s being challenged by interest groups in town who, bottom line, do not want to disclose their donors while they make campaign-related expenditures. That’s a non-viable position from a policy perspective,” Wertheimer said. “That is an anti-reform position, and if Rep. Van Hollen is challenging that and being attacked for being too much of a reformer, then it tells me we’re living in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ in this city.”

Not much difference between the hypothetical ad and the quote in the news story, is there? Just two that seem important…

Arizona media report that an FEC complaint filed against J.D. Hayworth and KFYI-AM has been dismissed by the Commission.  The complaint alleged that by broadcasting Hayworth’s talk-radio program, the station made an illegal contribution to his campaign.  

In which he happens to be challenging uber-reform Senator John McCain.

The reports note that the complaint was filed by a former staffer to McCain.

The Commission recognized that the programs fell within the statutory exemption for news, commentary and editorials carried over broadcasting facilities (or in periodicals, newspapers, etc.)  This conclusion was about as hard to reach as falling off a log.  Good riddance.

Campaign finance fans will recall the regulatory battle over internet regulation after the signing of the McCain-Feingold Act. The FEC had never seen so many comments on one of its rulemakings.

Bloggers everywhere were claiming that they fit within the “media exemption” to federal campaign law.  Reformers were saying the media exemption should be limited to well-established media organizations.

Monitoring Ed Schultz’s MSNBC talk show for campaign speak does seem ridiculous.  But the reason for it comes from policies by progressives … like Schultz. 

Much ado is being made about the supposed “war” between the Obama White House and FOX News. As the New York Times reports:

Attacking the news media is a time-honored White House tactic but to an unusual degree, the Obama administration has narrowed its sights to one specific organization, the Fox News Channel, calling it, in essence, part of the political opposition.

“We’re going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent,” said Anita Dunn, the White House communications director, in a telephone interview on Sunday. “As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.”

Her comments are only the latest in the volatile exchange between the administration and the top-rated network…

While some appear concerned that the White House feud with FOX News raises First Amendment concerns, we at the Center for Competitive Politics are not among them. Frosty relationships between administrations and the media are nothing new, as Thomas Jefferson’s quote that “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers” attests.  And who can forget ex-Vice President Spiro Agnew and his comment about the “nattering nabobs of negativism?”

What is of interest to CCP, however, is that the controversy has seemingly given new life, or at least a fresh story to attach itself to, to the claim that FOX News successfully went to court in order to get a ruling explicitly protecting a First Amendment right to “lie” in its programming. The story is often used to support demands for censorship of the airwaves under the guise of the so-called “fairness doctrine,” along with calls to extend it to cable among those who understand that FOX News is a cable news outlet.

The Supreme Court has by now voted on Citizens United v. FEC and the justices should be writing their opinions.  After a special oral argument last week, most observers were predicting a win for Citizens United in their battle to air “Hillary: The Movie,” (or more realistically, for Citizens United’s future political speech efforts.)  The question will be how large the win is – will the Court overrule the a pair of recent precedents, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce and McConnell v. FEC, which themselves twisted and distorted the Court’s prior decision in Buckley v. Valeo, while claiming to leave Buckley intact (a sort of “faux judicial restraint)?  Or will it decide the case on more narrow grounds?

In this article from the October 2008 issue of Engage, journal of the Federalist Society’s Practice Groups, CCP Academic Advisor and George Mason University Law Professor Allison Hayward  argues that a “principled court” can and should “repair the mistakes of the past.” 

She argues, in part:

Unfortunately, the present blend of court-crafted doctrine and Congress-crafted statute is complicated and irrational. Thus, attempting to scrutinize future cases within existing precedent will not help decrease the burden this conglomeration imposes on political activity. That complexity alone may raise a deeper legal question. Can complexity itself pose an unconstitutional burden on speech, association, or other protected activity?