Snap Back To Reality

People wonder why conservatives have a problem with McCain. He's every liberal's favorite Republican (except for here in Minnesota, where the distinction is held by Elmer Anderson, who embodies everything liberals want from a Minnesota Republican; he's pro-tax, and he's dead).

I once figured that the left wouldn't twig to the crushing blow to democracy that the McCain-Feingold law is, until it came back to roost on them.

"Lorika", a contributor at "New Patriot", seems to have swerved perilously close to a blinding flash of epiphany:

Usually I have great respect for McCain, and it seems he would be against this, I just don't understand how he can be on the wrong side of this issue. Very disappointing.

Only if you've been under a rock for the past five years (or getting your news from Atrios, pardon the redundancy).

McCain-Feingold was designed precisely to silence dissent and protect incumbency. It was spawned at a time when the media and the left had their alpaca undies in a knot over "attack ads" taken out with so-called "soft money" by the likes of the NRA. They were a powerful vehicle for getting minority views onto the public radar - in those pre-blog days, they were really the only way for the politically-out-of-favor to be heard. Band together. Raise funds. Produce and take out an ad. McCain-Feingold was designed from the beginning to stifle that sort of popular speech.

And when McCain-Feingold was written, "blog" was something you did after drinking "Old Milwaukee" and eating a few gas-station burritos.

Today, though, blogging is the most powerful vehicle for getting minority/nonestablishment views before the public.

Since McCain's record for the past five years is about nothing but stifling non-establishment voices (and make no mistake, whatever his quarrels with the conservatives in the GOP he is establishment).

Why would anyone think blogs would be any different in John McCain's mind?

Posted by Mitch at March 10, 2005 07:56 AM | TrackBack