Archive [February 2000]

“When it comes to freedom of speech and our desire for healthy campaigns and a healthy democracy, you cannot have both.”

An anti-American statement, is it not? Read it again, slowly. Someone is claiming that you can’t have “freedom of speech” and “a healthy democracy” at the same time. Sounds like some dictator explaining why he’s closing down the newspapers in some banana republic, doesn’t it?

What tyrant do you suppose uttered these words — South Africa’s P.W. Botha during the apartheid years, maybe? Or Fidel Castro today?

No, actually the quote dates from 1997 and it appeared in Time magazine. It turns out the speaker was none other than Little Dick Gephardt (D, MO), the numero-uno-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives. He was talking about the Great Liberal Solution to Purify Politics — campaign finance reform, or as we at the EIB Network 2000 call it, “CFR.”

In the context of American freedom, CFR may be the biggest hoax that’s ever been. Because the fact is, all the campaign reform proposals favored by the Democrats and the mainstream media would curtail freedom of speech. What’s really up their sleeves is trying to stifle conservatives, and stop Republicans from winning elections.

Lesson one on fashionable legislation like McCain-Feingold: these so-called campaign finance reform bills are simply unconstitutional.

Time and time again, the Supreme Court has thwarted those who have tried to restrict the spending of money in political campaigns, declaring that such restrictions violate the First Amendment. As the landmark Buckley v. Valeo decision stated 20 years ago: “The mere growth in the cost of federal election campaigns in and of itself provides no basis for governmental restrictions on the quantity of campaign spending and the resulting limitation on the scope of federal campaigns … In the free society ordained by our Constitution it is not the government, but the people — individually as citizens and candidates and collectively as associations and political committees — who must retain control over the quantity and range of debate on public issues in a political campaign.” How about that. The people, not the government. What a concept.

Such Supreme Court rulings do not, however, stop the liberals and the media (but I repeat myself) from pushing unconstitutional governmental restrictions at every possible opportunity. Besides, since when has the Constitution ever hampered this bunch, anyway? They simply call the document “living” and pretend it says whatever they want it to say at the moment.

When Constitutional expert Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute testified to Congress on the subject, he got to the crux of the matter: this is an issue that goes to the very heart of why this nation was founded. “In a free society,” Pilon explained, “individuals and organizations are and ought to be free to associate in any way they wish, to speak as they wish, and to spend their money as they wish, provided only that in the process they respect the rights of others to do the same. The Declaration of Independence implies as much when it speaks of our unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Besides, in addition to being unconstitutional, what liberals deceptively call “meaningful campaign finance reform” is fruitless. Any time someone naively tries to “take money out of politics,” it always finds its way back in. As Larry J. Sabato, the University of Virginia political scientist, writes: “One cannot dam the flow of political money in a society as free as ours. If it’s blocked in one area, it will simply find other channels.”

We don’t need further restrictions on political speech. We need fewer. The truth is, the amount of money spent on campaigns in this country, on every race from dog catcher to philanderer-in-chief, comes to a grand total of less than $10 per voter. Ten bucks! Folks, listen to me: We need more money spent in political campaigns, not less. In the future, with ever-more-complex technology, even more money will be required in political campaigns to maintain a free election system.

In fact, most everything that is wrong with our election system today is the result of politicians trying to take money out of politics. It’s yet another example in the long list of unintended consequences in which liberal “fixes” produced exactly the opposite of what liberals predicted.

In 1974, in the wake of Watergate, Congress decided there was too much money influencing politics. So they changed the law, severely restricting the amount of money individuals or groups could give to a candidate. Those limits, $1,000 per campaign per person (just upheld by the Supreme Court}, haven’t been adjusted once for inflation in over 25 years. The result? Either candidates must be independently wealthy, or must constantly hold thousand-dollar-a-plate rubber chicken fundraisers. Or, they can cheat — like Clinton and Algore. Call up some Buddhist nuns maybe, or the Chi-Com military.

When that happened during the 1996 election cycle, did the media scream about the bad results of bad law restricting free speech? Noooo. They demanded more bad law to further restrict free speech.

Take July 20 – 27, 1997 — not a good time for the Administration of President Wilhelm von Schlickmeister. It was a week that saw The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Times break four major stories exposing President and Mrs. Clinton’s skirting campaign finance laws. Did ABC News anchor Charles Gibson react to it by scrutinizing the Clintons or the Democrats for their shady fundraising practices? No. This is what he asked correspondent Cokie Roberts: “Cokie, everyone agrees this is a horrible system that we have, the campaign finance system. Do you see reform coming out of these hearings, or are we going to be left with the same system that everybody agrees doesn’t work?”

In other words, never mind that the Clintons broke the law. It was all the fault of this horrible, malicious campaign system that made them do it. “It’s the system, man.” Liberals never change.

But the solution to the problems created by the limits imposed in 1974 is not more limits. Having a campaign system in this country that champions freedom comes down to four simple words: no limits, full disclosure. Every American voter should be able to give as much as they want to a candidate; that way the money goes directly to where the donor wants it to go. That would make the “soft-money” expenditures that many liberals hate practically disappear, because there would be little need for them. (In fact the “issue-oriented” advertising so decried by “reformers” only began after the 1974 limits were imposed. Guess what: the limits on candidate contributions are causing the soft money spending. It’s the restrictions, stupid.)

Hand-in-hand with the end of the campaign caps should be complete and timely disclosure of where contributions are coming from. So when Gore gets $10 million from Barbra Streisand, I can make fun of both of them. And so can the Republicans — on television, in print, on radio, on the internet, or wherever future technology makes speech possible.

This is what scares the libs most: freedom and truth. So they want the United States government to make it illegal for political candidates to spend more than a certain amount of money getting their message out. They know that their message will get out — over and over, on the nightly news, on the political talk shows, even, as we now know, thanks to newly-revealed government script approval deals, on regular network shows. What they want to restrict is conservative speech.

Liberals know that politics minus private spending protects their power, and the power of their willing accomplices in the mainstream media. With liberal campaign finance reform, we’ll have nothing less than tyranny at the hands of a press that does the bidding of Democrats. And union spending will remain untouched: the liberal money-sluice that it is.

Which is why the media are beside themselves in trying to get something like this McCain-Feingold bill passed. They know it would limit Republican access to the airwaves via paid political commercials — the only counterweight to their control over what tens of millions of Americans see and hear in regard to politics. (That is, apart from the tens of millions of listeners of yours truly, Rushtradamus. I guarantee you, there will never be anything the liberals will be able to do about me. Although they will keep trying.)

Think about all the flak that Dan Quayle had to take. He misspelled a word and the media hung onto it like a pit bull. They still haven’t stopped reminding the public about it. The Vice President, on the other hand, is one of the most shameless liars in the history of this country. You know it, as an informed and engaged member of my audience, but most Americans don’t. They don’t know about Gore’s gaffes, either. Like walking into Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, and not recognizing busts of the Founding Fathers.

The reason people don’t know is that TV news doesn’t tell them. And neither does any other sector of the mainstream press. Because the media in this country is in ideological sync with Algore and, therefore, they make it their business to avoid in-depth coverage of stories embarrassing to him.

When they’re not protecting him, they’re throwing dinner parties for him. ABC News picked up the bill for a major shindig at the home of its White House reporter John Cochran. All kinds of reporters were there, but of course, ABC‘s conservatives (George Will and the since-departed Bill Kristol) were kept off the invite list. Wouldn’t want the Veep to feel tense.

As you know, the best way anyone can be informed of the truth about Algore and his routine lies and gaffes is by listening to my program. But for those who do not yet listen to daily broadcast excellence, those opposed to Democrats have only one channel: advertising. If you cut that off because “there’s too much money in politics,” then the media rule the roost completely. The public believes Algore or Hillary are as competent and brilliant and caring and beneficent as Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather say they are. Driving money out of campaigns gives a powerful advantage to candidates with powerful friends such as celebrities and big labor unions — i.e., liberals.

The saddest thing about all this campaign reform nonsense is the Republicans who buy into it. Sen. John McCain is a man it is impossible not to admire. For five years as a POW, he was brutally tortured by the Communist North Vietnamese. He is an American hero. But the fact is, he has been the media’s favorite Republican candidate for much of this presidential campaign because of his misguided support of limits on campaign advertising. A year ago, McCain gave the keynote address at a gathering of conservatives. McCain told the audience: “If the American people had not elected a Republican Congress in 1994, and sustained our majority last November, the balanced budget — indeed, the budget surplus — would still be a joke at Washington cocktail parties.” He added, “I am a proud Reagan Republican, and I don’t believe in laws, I believe in freedom.”

You are so right Mr. McCain — but your campaign reform proposal isn’t about freedom; it’s another set of restrictive laws. Sir, there never would have been a Republican Congress elected in 1994 — and there never would have been a President Reagan — if Republicans had been prevented from counteracting the media’s lies with their own well-produced, aggressively crafted political commercials. And that costs money, my friends. Always has, always will. Get over it.