Sweet: John McCain gets screwed by his own constitution-trashing "reforms"
The irony is delightful, even exhilarating.
Back when his campaign had fallen and couldn’t get up, McVain applied for millions in public aid. But now that he can raise cash aplenty by stoking conservative anger at the New York Times, he wants out of the public financing system. What’s more, he says that opting out is … wait for it … his constitutional right!
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He-he. |
Remember: According to McVain, you don’t have a constitutional right to even mention the gawd damn name of a sitting member of Congress in the sixty days before an election, lest you say something to pollute the sweet purity of our ruling class. And yet he has a right to game the system whenever it suits him. What a hair hole!
But — and hallelujah! — the Federal Election Commission has told him to grab some ankle, and prepare to get fucked all up in that tired ass:
The nation’s top federal election official told Sen. John McCain yesterday that he cannot immediately withdraw from the presidential public financing system as he had requested, a decision that threatens to dramatically restrict his spending until the general election campaign begins in the fall.
The prospect of being financially hamstrung by the very fundraising system he helped create is the latest in a series of bitter challenges for the presumed GOP nominee, who still faces a fractured conservative coalition as he assumes the mantle of party leadership.
By nursing on your tit, McVain agreed to “an overall limit on spending of $54 million for the primary season, which lasts until the party’s nominating convention in September.” He’s spent $49 million already:
Knowingly violating the spending limit is a criminal offense that could put McCain at risk of stiff fines and up to five years in prison.
“If in fact he is stuck with these spending limits, it would be a serious limitation on what he can do,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
Finance experts compared the situation to the massive imbalance faced by Republican presidential nominee Robert J. Dole in 1996, when he was forced to contend with spending limits while his opponent, President Bill Clinton, was not. (Emphasis added.)
Do you think that’s the only similarity between Dole and McVain? Me neither.
ADDED —
I’m not the only one who’s taking pleasure in McVain’s comeuppance.