{"id":8066,"date":"2006-07-29T10:27:46","date_gmt":"2006-07-29T14:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8066.html"},"modified":"2006-07-29T10:27:46","modified_gmt":"2006-07-29T14:27:46","slug":"moving-forward-with-mccain-feingold-without-mccain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/moving-forward-with-mccain-feingold-without-mccain\/","title":{"rendered":"Moving forward with McCain-Feingold — without McCain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sen. [tag]Russ Feingold[\/tag] (D-Wis.) likes to joke that the campaign-finance reform measure that bears his name is so well-known that a large part of the country thinks his first name is “[tag]McCain[\/tag].” As it turns out, that may not be a problem anymore<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The quartet of lawmakers behind every major federal campaign finance restriction in the past decade is suddenly missing one of its members.<\/p>\n

The elided surnames of the four men, “[tag]McCain-Feingold[\/tag]-Shays-Meehan,” have become synonymous with so-called campaign finance reform, but Senator McCain, a Republican of Arizona, is conspicuously absent from the latest effort.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Senator Feingold, a Democrat of Wisconsin, Rep. Martin Meehan, a Democrat of Massachusetts, and Rep. Christopher Shays, a Republican of Connecticut, introduced a bill to revive the crumbling system for public financing of presidential campaigns.<\/p>\n

The bill is largely identical to a measure all four men introduced in 2003, but this time around Mr. McCain is not on board.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When the New York Sun asked for an explanation, McCain’s office refused comment. But “several people involved in discussions about the legislation” said McCain will probably abandon the public-financing system during his 2008 campaign, so he had to give up on a measure he’s championed for years to avoid hypocrisy.<\/p>\n

Kevin Drum responded<\/a>, “Can we start keeping score on the number of positions that Mr. [tag]Straight Talk[\/tag] has abandoned now that he thinks he has a serious shot at the presidency?” Good idea; I’ve started a list.
\n
\n* McCain criticized TV preacher [tag]Jerry Falwell[\/tag] as “an agent of intolerance” in 2002, but has since decided to cozy up to the man<\/a> who said Americans “deserved” the 9\/11 attacks.<\/p>\n

* McCain used to oppose Bush’s [tag]tax cuts[\/tag] for the very wealthy, but he reversed course<\/a> in February.<\/p>\n

* In 2000, McCain accused Texas businessmen Sam and Charles Wyly of being corrupt, spending “dirty money” to help finance Bush’s presidential campaign. McCain not only filed a complaint against the Wylys for allegedly violating campaign finance law, he also lashed out at them publicly. In April, McCain reached out to the Wylys for support<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* McCain used to think that Grover Norquist was a crook and a corrupt shill for dictators. Then McCain got serious about running for president and began to reconcile<\/a> with Norquist.<\/p>\n

* McCain took a firm line in opposition to torture, and then caved to White House demands<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And now McCain has given up on his signature policy issue, [tag]campaign-finance reform[\/tag], and won’t back the same provision he sponsored just a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n

Just think, it’s only July 2006. He still has a year and a half to reverse course on any number of other issues he pretended to care about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sen. [tag]Russ Feingold[\/tag] (D-Wis.) likes to joke that the campaign-finance reform measure that bears his name is so well-known that a large part of the country thinks his first name is “[tag]McCain[\/tag].” As it turns out, that may not be a problem anymore. The quartet of lawmakers behind every major federal campaign finance restriction in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}