Disappointing
A while back, a few of us blogs decided to stick it to the McCain-Feingold Incumbent Protection Act. I said that:
Any organization* that wants to run a political ad criticizing any politician in that window can do so here. Not only will I run the ad free, I’ll do a post on the ad on the front page.
We had many blogs agree to do the same or similar. Said movement was publicized heavily on the blogs and even got a mention in some mainstream media outlets. Well, four days until election time and, to my knowledge, not a single group took anyone up on that offer. Not. A. Single. One.
Free speech, you can’t even give it away.
Bummer.
November 3rd, 2006 at 1:46 pm
Unfortunately, about what I figured.
November 3rd, 2006 at 2:02 pm
I think a big part of it is that based on what I’ve seen on the TeeVee, the provisions of McCain-Feingold haven’t exactly prevented them from getting their message out their through traditional channels. It seems the affront to free speech isn’t as egregious as you think.
Also, you still haven’t explained why McCain-Feingold is necessarily friendly to incumbents and hostile to challengers. You might want to explain it to the solid number of incumbents who are going to get bounced on their ass this year, too…
November 3rd, 2006 at 3:50 pm
Tom said it before I could. I didn’t notice any absence of advertised criticism against political candidates.
November 3rd, 2006 at 3:59 pm
They probably can’t accept the offer of free ad space without it being considered a ‘gift-in-kind’ donation.
November 4th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
If McCain-Feingold was supposed to cut down on the money spend in elections, it hasn’t worked. All it does is to attack the First Amendment.
The money expenditure doesn’t bother me, it’s the out-of-state money coming into Tennessee for Corker and especially Ford. I want my Senator to represent Tennessee, not be beholden to outside interests. So any so-called Campaign finance Reform should simply be: no money vote without a ballot vote.
And if they really wanted to stop the massive money flow into campaigns, the best way would be to repeal the 17th Amendment and have the “several States” by their legislatures return to appointing senators to represent their respective state in the State House, i.e. the U.S. Senate. That would immediately eliminate the massive amounts of out-of state money flowing into all these state-wide senate races.
But it’s not the amount of money–it’s just that the two-party political-media establishment wants to keep all the money concentrated in their hands.