{"id":1107,"date":"2004-08-26T08:28:28","date_gmt":"2004-08-26T12:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/08\/flip_floppery\/"},"modified":"2004-08-26T08:28:28","modified_gmt":"2004-08-26T12:28:28","slug":"flip_floppery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/08\/flip_floppery\/","title":{"rendered":"Flip Floppery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s President Bush’s statement on Monday<\/a> against<\/i> the right of private organizations to run political ads:<\/p>\n

THE PRESIDENT: I’m denouncing all the stuff being on TV of the 527s. That’s what I’ve said. I said this kind of unregulated soft money is wrong for the process. And I asked Senator Kerry to join me in getting rid of all that kind of soft money, not only on TV, but used for other purposes, as well. I, frankly, thought we’d gotten rid of that when I signed the McCain-Feingold bill. I thought we were going to, once and for all, get rid of a system where people could just pour tons of money in and not be held to account for the advertising. And so I’m disappointed with all those kinds of ads.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A silly statement, really. When he signed McCain-Feingold, Bush knew full well (or he could have if he bothered to ask) that there are loopholes in the regulations But anyway his position on 527s is clear: our decisive leader takes a strong stand against soft money ads on TV.
\nFast forward two whole days. Here’s what Bush-Cheney ’04, Inc.<\/a> wrote in a letter to Senator Kerry:<\/p>\n

We urge you to condemn the double standard that you and your campaign have enforced regarding a veteran’s right to openly express their feelings about your activities on return from Vietnam.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Huh? A a veteran’s right to openly express their feelings<\/i>? You mean that suddenly groups of citizens may have First Amendment rights after all? That’s a sudden reversal. One that, at the hands of Kerry, would be labeled a “flip flop.” But since it’s not, this is simply a clarification.
\nStill, it’s a rapid turn. It wouldn’t have anything to do with this<\/a>, would it?<\/p>\n

A day after President Bush called for an end to campaign spending by independent groups, one such Republican organization said on Tuesday that it had raised $35 million to counter Democratic attacks on television and hoped to wage a $125 million advertising campaign through Election Day.
\nThe organization, the Progress for America Voter Fund, is the first Republican group to announce that it had raised a substantial amount of money to compete with Democratic-leaning groups that have collected tens of millions of dollars to attack the Bush-Cheney campaign on television.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Surely not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s President Bush’s statement on Monday against the right of private organizations to run political ads: THE PRESIDENT: I’m denouncing all the stuff being on TV of the 527s. That’s what I’ve said. I said this kind of unregulated soft money is wrong for the process. And I asked Senator Kerry to join me in […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1107","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}