The Sunshine Empire

Watching This Week’s political round table and I am just amazed at how poor a job the “liberal media” is doing. The last handful of election cycles have had Republicans banking on mountains more cash then Democrats but now that the mountain is on the blue side of the aisle the issue of fairness has reared it’s head. On a questionnaire more than a year ago Senator Obama indicated that he would want to take public financing for the general election if the Republican nominee did. Much like President Bush and most candidates now regardless of party, Barack Obama opted out of the public financing for the primary season and has raised an obscene amount of cash which helped him win the most competitive Democratic primary since 1972. Senator McCain opted out of the system at the beginning of the primaries, then found he was losing badly so opted back in. He then used the hope of public financing to secure a $5 million loan, then promptly opted back out of the system even though the Chairman of the Federal Elections Commission stated he could not. For Washington glory you do what you have to do.

Now once Obama was assured of the nomination he indicated that he would opt into the public system if McCain would refuse and regulate the use of 527 Swift Boat bullshit groups that McCain’s own landmark campaign finance legislation was meant to regulate, and McCain refused. McCain essentially told Obama that he would refuse to abide by rules that he himself had put into legislation. For that reason Obama decided to legally opt out of that system and suddenly it’s Obama that’s the flip-flopper in this race. Senator McCain was against offshore drilling just weeks ago until him and his fancy-boy Charlie Crist flip-flopped. Senator McCain was against the Bush tax cuts for the top 1% of wage earners when the country had a $155 billion budget surplus because we just didn’t have the money, and has flip-flopped into supporting them being made perminant now that we have a $300 billion deficit. Senator McCain called Jerry Fallwel and “agent of intolerence,” but then flip-flopped and was washing the man’s feat before he passed away, yet it is Senator Obama that is “ruining his brand” in the words of Bush staffer Matthew Dowd with a “flip-flop.” I’m starting to worry that liberals might have lost control of the media.

The political round table on This Week misses the point that the average American voter probably thinks that American Presidential campaigns are sponsered by Ford and Nike. They themselves even point out correctly that Senator Obama outspent Hillary Clinton almost three-to-one in places like Pennsylvania and still lost big time. So money is not the cure-all. Yet as we have said before, the money indicates where the passion is this election cycle and the fact is if McCain was raking it in at the level that Obama is you are a fool if you think he would do something different than what Barack is doing.