{"id":1542,"date":"2004-08-27T11:07:00","date_gmt":"2004-08-27T15:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/08\/27\/hoo-boy-does-this-one-smell-of-hypo"},"modified":"2004-08-27T11:07:00","modified_gmt":"2004-08-27T15:07:00","slug":"hoo-boy-does-this-one-smell-of-hypocrisy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/08\/27\/hoo-boy-does-this-one-smell-of-hypocrisy\/","title":{"rendered":"Hoo, boy, does this one smell of hypocrisy…"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

From today’s Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

But when pressed repeatedly if he would specifically denounce the
\nadvertisements, which Mr. Kerry has said were being run with the tacit
\napproval of the Bush campaign, the president refused to condemn then.
\nInstead, he said he would talk only of the “broader issue” of the
\npolitical committees that take to the airwaves with attack
\nadvertisements. <\/p>\n

“Five twenty-sevens – I think these ought to be
\noutlawed,” he said. “I think they should have been outlawed a year
\nago. We have billionaires writing checks, large checks, to influence
\nthe outcome of the election.” <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Two thoughts.  First, he does exactly the thing that he thinks
\nshould be eliminated.  And like any self-interested person, I
\ncan’t imagine that he really means keeping billionaires out of politics
\napplies to him.  Just the ways that billionaires (i.e., George
\nSoros) work against him.<\/p>\n

Second, why shouldn’t billionaires be able to do this?  They have
\nmoney, and they want to use that money to advance a candidate for
\nelection.  What’s wrong with trying to influence the outcome of
\nthe election?  That seems to be what we do whenever we register
\npeople to vote, run ads, do mailers, talk to our friends and neighbors
\nabout politics, and so forth.  We all work to influence elections,
\nwith whatever tools are available to us.  And when people argue
\nthat we shouldn’t allow money in politics, how would they propose that
\nwe do this whole process?  (Unless you’re willing to argue that
\nelections should be entirely publicly financed, money has to be part of
\nthe political process, whether you like money or not [as many of my
\nlefty friends seem to feel].  And what would those who want
\npublicly financed elections do until we get those [which could be quite
\na while in our system]?)<\/p>\n

But Bush’s comment seems hypocritical, because the 527s have tipped the
\nmoney balance toward the Dems in a way that many Republican operatives
\nwere not anticipating, and so they are unprepared.  This is less
\nabout money and more about advantage.  I surmise that Bush wants
\nto stop MoveOn.org, not Swift Boat Veterans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From today’s Times: But when pressed repeatedly if he would specifically denounce the advertisements, which Mr. Kerry has said were being run with the tacit approval of the Bush campaign, the president refused to condemn then. Instead, he said he would talk only of the “broader issue” of the political committees that take to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-oS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}