I don't think Thompson has ever denied he voted for CFR. Hillary, however, has tried to state what she was really voting for was inspections, which obviously does not match her position at the time.
I fail to see the distinction.
Well, if something that obvious isn't clear to you on face then no amount of explaining is going to help you.
Well-stated.
So, you give Thompson a pass, but I doubt you would give Hillary one.
I fail to see the distinction.
That's a really pathetic attempt at an analogy.
Fred said that he voted for the campaign finance bill because in the real world, if you give a business executive large sums of money and they in turn make decisions that benefit you, that businessman goes to jail.
If you listen to how the advocates of campaign finance portray it, it appears to make sense. The problem is that the way it is portrayed, and the way the law actually works are very different. Fred said that he bought into the idea of trying to limit the influence of campaign donations on public officials. However, now that he has seen the law in action, it does not do what it was portrayed to do and should be repealed.
He made a mistake. He admits he made a mistake. However, he also explained his intentions.
So what is Hillary's most recent explanation for why she voted for the war, and why she is trying to pull out now, not to mention why her support one way or the other keeps wavering?
Most importantly, does it match the rest of what she has said and done? Is she in general consistent on such issues?
If you fail to see the distinction between how Hillary portrays herself however she thinks will benefit her at that particular point in time, and how Fred's far more consistent voting record, and far more consistent expression of his views, then you must be working awfully hard to hold your eyes shut.
Let's be consistent. If we skewer one pol for flipflopping and changing his mind, let's do it for all that flipflop for change their minds.
Maybe you should actually look at what the candidate has to say as to why they voted how they did, and see if their goals and intentions really are reasonably consistent. Fred's are.
In reality, things don't always work out like we think they will. In reality we all make mistakes.
But if you look at Fred's actions he's pretty consistent. He argued against campaign donations in the form of unlimited soft money. At the same time he worked to raise the limits on hard money donations.
In Fred's own campaign, it was pretty obvious that he didn't like going and begging groups for money. People have criticized him for not being aggressive enough in campaigning, but his actually campaigning and addressing issues isn't what they were talking about, it was the fact that he doesn't aggressively fundraise for his campaign to the extent that other candidates do.
Look at how he is "campaigning" now. He is getting his voice heard on the issues and making himself known by working as a commentator and by blogging.
Instead of having to spend his time raising funds, and indebting himself to the groups that help him raise those funds, he is doing a non-traditional campaign.
He won't be able to keep that up forever, because the campaign finance laws won't allow him to continue on as a radio commentator after he declares his candidacy. He's going to have to go out on the campaign trail and beat the bushes for campaign money just like everyone else at that point. However, he doesn't plan on raising and spending the kinds of money his opponents have been.
[I'm not giving him a pass on this. I want a full explanation. This bill, CFR, is a direct infringement on the First Amendment. Thompson owes the voters a better explanation than 'oh sorry, it's not working the way we intended'.]
Of course he does. That campaign finance law has been a horrible infringement on people's First Amendment rights. He did not advocate the more egregious parts of it, and actually pushed for the raising of the hard money limits, which loosened some of the previous limitations on free speech, but he did vote for the bill as a whole, and shares in the blame for it being passed. He therefore has a responsibility not only to explain his actions, but to work to change the law.
I agree that he needs to speak more clearly on this. I have not found a good article he has written or interview he has given where he lays it all out for people in one place.
What he has said has been consistent, but either he is hesitant to speak on this in detail, or he underestimates the importance of the issue. It may also be that a real solution to the problem of the influence of money in politics doesn't really exist, so while he should denounce the mess that is McCain-Feingold, proposing what should replace it is a bit more difficult.
Talking about doing away with campaign finance laws altogether will give the media an opportunity to attack him as a greedy lawyer who wants to be able to accept unlimited bribes.
It is going to be a difficult subject to deal with, but I agree with you that he needs to provide a much more clear and complete answer if he's going to win the trust of the many who oppose him due to his past efforts on campaign finance.
In the same respect, Rudy owns a full explanation of his position on abortion and on gun contol and his infringment on the Second Amendment.
Rudy has a long and consistent history on those issues, and his current claims simply are not consistent with his past efforts. Even worse is how Rudy attacked those issues.
Of course that brings us back to Fred. While what Fred has described as his goals in campaign finance reform seem noble, the law is a direct infringement on the First Amendment, and hardly consistent with his generally small government, federalist stance on issues.
It appears that the issues that Fred pushed for in the bill, such as raising the limits on hard money donations are actually consistent with his small government stance, but the law as a whole is not.
McCain-Feingold happened when he was relatively new to the Senate. Did he get outmaneuvered by more skilled politicians into supporting a horrible bill while trying to push for some minor, positive reforms within the larger scope of the legislation? It kind of seems that way consider what he was pushing for, and his otherwise reasonably consistent small government, conservative voting record.
Let's hold ALL their feet to the fire. We don't have to settle for---and end up with second-rate politicians.
Fair enough. While I like what I've seen from Fred so far, I do agree that we need to hear a lot more from him, especially on the issue of CFR and protecting the First Amendment rights of the people.
I agree with you about holding all the candidates’ feet to the fire.
I vehemently oppose McCain-Feingold. Fred was mistaken in that he supported limits on soft money; he accurately assessed soft money corruption problems, but his solution was wrong. However, he also fought McCain and the Senate donks to substantially raise the limits on individual contributions, and made the case on the Senate floor that these contributions are free speech (let me know if you want the links — I don’t want to spam you). So, I think his record is mixed on that front.
Overall, his record is truly outstanding on the Constitution: he introduced the Federalism Enforcement Act and other federalism initiatives in order to get the federal government out of areas the states/people rightly own per the Constitution; he introduced the Regulatory Right to Know Act to rein in the unelected bureaucracy that increasingly writes the law; he commonly quoted our Founders and our founding documents when arguing for smaller, more accountable, Constitutional federal government.
So, in the context of this remarkably solid record consistently rooted in a Constitutional philosophy, I am much more apt to view his error on the soft money part of McCain-Feingold as a sincere mistake.
Giuliani’s record, on the other hand, seems to be based on nothing consistent except a quest for power. So, in my mind he has much less credibility. For me, the jury’s still out on Romney.