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Dems take in twice as much “foreign” money as Republicans
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posted at 8:48 am on October 18, 2010 by Ed Morrissey
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Over the weekend, some Democrats began questioning the White House strategy
of demonizing third-party groups for potentially using foreign-raised money
in political messaging. Now we know why. Apparently, the shrieking over
foreign influence was yet another case of projection:
Democratic leaders in the House and Senate criticizing GOP groups for
allegedly funneling foreign money into campaign ads have seen their party
raise more than $1 million from political action committees affiliated with
foreign companies.
House and Senate Democrats have received approximately $1.02 million
this cycle from such PACs, according to an analysis compiled for The Hill by
the Center for Responsive Politics. House and Senate GOP leaders have taken
almost $510,000 from PACs on the same list.
This isn’t illegal. The money comes from American employees of the foreign
corporations. But the companies control the PACs, and their contributions
to political parties and campaigns “is about as close as you can get” to
foreign-based money flowing into campaigns, as the Center for Responsive
Politics notes.
Those who got held out as examples by Democrats of potential agents of
foreign influence aren’t shy about pointing out the obvious, either:
“Barack Obama criticized the Supreme Court and his adversaries over the
bogus charge of foreign money tainting elections – while leaders in his
own party had taken more than a million dollars from the foreign cookie jar,
” said Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for American Crossroads, the
political group at the center of the controversy.
“The hypocrisy here is just stunning,” he said.
That’s not exactly news, either.
For those legitimately concerned over foreign influence on elections, the
problem exists in this structure that allows companies outside the US to
create and control PACs that can contribute to American political campaigns.
The fact that they raise the money from Americans does not negate the fact
that the companies control the PACs and use the leverage for their own
campaigning efforts. In fact, this is worse than the hypothetical (which
the White House and Democrats turned into an explicit allegation without any
proof whatsoever) of American PACs controlled by American citizens raising
funds overseas and using them in political campaigns.
Perhaps the White House didn’t want to focus on the real problem and
decided to use a fake problem for misdirection. |
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