Soros and Campaign Finance Reform

This election season may involve one piece of irony that will be lost on most folks with only rudimentary knowledge of politics. That irony will involve George Soros and the attacks he is about to orchestrated on John McCain. Soros is a murky figure and it is always difficult to pin point exactly what is real and what is perception with him, however it appears that Soros was a puppetmaster behind Campaign Finance Reform championed by McCain and now he will use that very law to launch a full frontal assault on McCain himself. Here is how Bill O'Reilly put it...

Enter radical left-wing billionaire George Soros, who quickly drilled a number of loopholes into the law. Realizing organizations could pour unlimited amounts of cash into the political process if they didn't "endorse" a certain candidate, Soros and his far left guys set up MoveOn.org and other so-called "527 organizations" to wreak havoc during voting season.

Under Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code, a political organization can get tax-exempt status and spend unlimited money if it champions causes rather than specific candidates. You can't use money to promote a "Vote for Hillary" theme; however, you can buy TV time saying Hillary is a bad woman, you can opine that McCain and the Iraq war are evil, and you can put forth that Obama hangs out with a nasty preacher.

Get the ruse? The money cannot be used to tell the folks whom to vote for, but it can be spent to demonize a candidate on the "issues."

The problem with tracking Soros is he always keeps himself three degrees away from whatever he is actually doing. That said, from what I have been able to gather, groups that he funds and supports were behind the scenes power players in making CFR a reality. Here is how AIM put it...

Soros has always exercised influence over so-called campaign finance reform groups. Those groups were behind the McCain-Feingold bill to reform campaign spending that also put limits on the ability of independent groups to influence political races. The law included a loophole that allowed Soros to spend more than $20 million to defeat Bush.

Now, Senator John McCain's Reform Institute has been exposed for taking $150,000 from Soros' Open Society Institute. Journalist and author Richard Poe says the McCain group "has long served as a nerve center for the so-called 'campaign finance reform' movement-a movement which has done nothing to clean up campaign finance, but has done a great deal to empower federal judges and government bureaucrats to regulate political speech, in defiance of the Bill of Rights."

Evidence of Soros' fingerprints on CFR can be found. In fact, you don't have to look very far. Here is how the Soros funded Open Society Institute viewed CFR right after it was passed.

Along with several other foundations, OSI supports organizations that helped develop the case for reform through research, public education, collection of campaign finance data, and testing of reform options at both the state and federal level. These organizations pursued a wide range of reform options, including restrictions on large donations such as those enacted in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002; public financing of campaigns such as the program now in effect in Arizona; free television time for candidates; fuller disclosure of contributions; and improvements to the presidential campaign system to deal with the problems caused by some candidates' refusal to participate.

Among the organizations OSI has funded are Public Campaign, Common Cause Education Fund, Democracy 21, the Campaign Finance Institute, and the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University; a large number of state and regional organizations; and research groups such as the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Grants have also been awarded to academic researchers, constitutional scholarship, bipartisan roundtables, and other efforts.

In the specific case of the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act, OSI funded factual research to support the legal defense of the act against a constitutional challenge raised by Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell (R), the National Rifle Association, and others—a challenge that is currently pending before the Supreme Court.

This is the M.O. of Soros. He finds several front groups and creates all sorts of distance between himself and the groups, and then he starts dropping endless amounts of money into causes like: euthanasia, drug legalization, one world government, gun control, etc. CFR would give him the opportunity to influence our elections and once again keep his finger prints as far away as possible. It is of course still up for debate whether or not these 527's popped up on their own, or if in fact that was his master plan. What is clear is that CFR as it works now works well for Soros. He can drop millions, and billions if necessary, into shadowy groups that can go after pols and causes he sees fit, and his fingerprints are difficult to trace. Of course, the ultimate irony is that in campaign 2008 the target is his old partner John McCain.

Here is how Reuters put it...

Democratic grass roots organizations on Monday launched a $20 million campaign to defeat Republican John McCain in the 2008 U.S. presidential election by focusing their attention on rising costs of the Iraq war.

The campaign, supported by former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, aims to link war spending with the ailing U.S. economy.

...

Groups taking part in the new campaign are the Center for American Progress, USAction, MoveOn.org, VoteVets.org, Service Employees International Union and Americans United for Change.

What Reuters couldn't connect is that every group mentioned is linked to Soros. Some estimates have Soros planning on spending nine digits on so called issue advertisements. Of course, those numbers are difficult to track. Soros never spends any money directly. Rather, what he does is drop many millions into groups like OSI (Open Society Institute). OSI then funnels money to several other groups and many times those groups funnel money to other groups. The group that ends up spending the money is usually three and four links away from Soros himself. Because these groups aren't covered under CFR, Soros can drop whatever he feels like. Soros, whose wealth is estimated at 7 billion dollars, can drop just about anything he wants. Of course, it appears that he has decided to use the CFR that he likely helped craft to attack his own partner in CFR, John McCain.