The hypocrisy and mendacity with which Bush has gone after 527 advertising has been almost impressive in their scope. The president has railed against the independent groups despite creating the law that intentionally carved out a loophole for 527s to exist in the first place. Indeed, while he’s been saying the government ought to “shut down” and “outlaw” 527s because they’re “bad for the system,” Bush has also been creating a 527, working with and alongside 527s, and attending their fundraisers.
With this in mind, it seemed important when Bush reached out to John McCain last week to rein in 527s once and for all.
President Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) joined forces yesterday to seek legal action to reduce the influence of “527” political organizations, but the two remained in disagreement over whether Bush should condemn a television ad by the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacking John F. Kerry’s Vietnam service.
Bush called McCain en route to a campaign event in New Mexico to say his campaign would go to federal court to force the Federal Election Commission to prevent the independent groups — named for the section of the tax code that governs their activities — from raising and spending money in unlimited amounts.
From the start, going to court to force the FEC’s hand was silly; no one could actually expect any meaningful outcome of this matter before the election. But Ryan Lizza noted an even more important yesterday — Bush’s stunt doesn’t even address the problem Bush claims to have identified.
Reporters have consistently repeated that the president and the Bush campaign want to outlaw all 527s and thus prevent groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth [sic] from running the very ads that set off this debate. But Bush and McClellan appear to be completely uninformed about the lawsuit that the Bush campaign is pursuing. The point of the lawsuit isn’t to ban or outlaw 527s, which would clearly be unconstitutional.
Rather, the lawsuit seeks to force the groups to register as political action committees and thus be confined to using hard money only. In other words, under the Bush plan, if SBVT registered tomorrow in the way the president wants it to, there is nothing that would prevent the group from continuing to run the same ads it has been running. In fact, the group that Republicans say they are so incensed about, Moveon.org, has been using hard money to finance its campaign ads for several months.
The stories that played up Bush’s new alliance with McCain over 527s completely missed this point. Whether you hate the ads from MoveOn’s PAC or the Swiftboat ads from Bush’s former staffers, nothing would be different in terms of the campaign ads, even if Bush and McCain’s new effort was successful.
At a lunch for reporters yesterday here in New York, I asked Ed Gillespie whether SBVT — the group that the president says his plan would “outlaw” — would still be able to run the same ads it’s running now if the Bush campaign’s lawsuit were successful. His answer? Yes.
Last week, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said, “[T]the President said he wanted to work together [with McCain] to pursue court action to shut down all the ads and activity by these shadowy 527 groups.” Either Bush and his aides don’t know what they’re talking about, or they’re intentionally trying to deceive. Neither are pleasant options; I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about which is correct.