I cannot believe that I am actually quoting and linking to an article from Karl Rove! (Watch for flying monkeys!!) Much as I detest the man he is not an idiot and occasionally he actually tells it like it is.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122835139848377873.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
McCain Couldn’t Compete With Obama’s Money
America affirms Chicago’s Golden Rule.
By KARL ROVE
If money talks, we’ll likely soon hear the real reason why Barack Obama beat John McCain. Both men and the national parties will report to the Federal Election Commission today how much money they raised in October and November. And what the numbers will probably show is that Mr. Obama outspent Mr. McCain by the biggest margin in history, perhaps a quarter of a billion dollars.
On May 31, as the general election began in earnest, the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee had a combined $47 million in cash, while the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee had a combined $85 million.
Between then and Oct. 15, the Obama/DNC juggernaut raised $658.7 million. I estimate today’s reports will show Mr. Obama, the DNC and two other Obama fund-raising vehicles raised an additional $120 million to $140 million in October and November, giving them a total of between $827 million and $847 million in funds for the general election.
Mr. McCain and the RNC spent $550 million in the general election, including the $84 million in public financing Mr. McCain accepted in exchange for his campaign not raising money after the GOP convention.
How did Mr. Obama use his massive spending advantage?
He buried Mr. McCain on TV. Nielsen, the audience measurement firm, reports that between June and Election Day, Mr. Obama had a 3-to-2 advantage over Mr. McCain on network TV buys. And Mr. Obama’s edge was likely larger on local cable TV, which Nielsen doesn’t monitor.
Snip (Wait theres more)
To diminish criticism, Mr. Obama’s campaign spun the storyline that he was being bankrolled by small donors. Michael Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute, calls that a “myth.” CFI found that Mr. Obama raised money the old fashioned way — 74% of his funds came from large donors (those who donated more than $200) and nearly half from people who gave $1,000 or more.
But that’s not the entire story. It’s been reported that the Obama campaign accepted donations from untraceable, pre-paid debit cards used by Daffy Duck, Bart Simpson, Family Guy, King Kong and other questionable characters. If the FEC follows up with a report on this, it should make for interesting reading. (Emphasis added)
The really sad and scary part of this is the FEC will most likely NOT look into this or audit Obama’s campaign contributions. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15497.html
Obama likely to escape campaign audit
Adding insult to injury for Republicans: The FEC is obligated to complete a rigorous audit of McCain’s campaign coffers, which will take months, if not years, and cost McCain millions of dollars to defend.
Obama is expected to escape that level of scrutiny mostly because he declined an $84 million public grant for his campaign that automatically triggers an audit and because the sheer volume of cash he raised and spent minimizes the significance of his errors. Another factor: The FEC, which would have to vote to launch an audit, is prone to deadlocking on issues that inordinately impact one party or the other – like approving a messy and high-profile probe of a sitting president.
McCain, on the other hand, accepted the $84 million in taxpayer money, which not only barred him from raising or spending more – allowing Obama to fund many times more ads and ground operations – but also will keep his lawyers busy for a couple years explaining how every penny was spent.
Through the end of September, McCain had socked away $9.4 million in a special fund to pay for the audit.
The Obama campaign does not expect to be audited, but spokesman Ben LaBolt said it would be ready in the event it is.
“We have had a first rate compliance operation for an unprecedented national grassroots fundraising effort,” LaBolt said.
“Nobody wants to go through an audit,” said former FEC chairman Michael Toner. As the top lawyer for George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, which accepted public financing, Toner prepared for that campaign’s mandatory audit, before he was appointed by Bush to a seat on the FEC.
Agency investigators fan out across the nation interviewing campaign staffers and vendors to account for even the most seemingly trivial expenses.
The resulting audits have dinged publicly financed presidential campaigns for billing the press for port-a-potties accessible to supporters at events (Bob Dole in 1996) and using the wrong formula to divide the cost of outfitting campaign planes between primary and general accounts (John Kerry in 2004).
Obama – the first presidential candidate to decline public funding in the general election – certainly would provide fodder for the green eye-shades at the FEC’s E Street offices.
Obama’s campaign admitted it initially mis-categorized the purpose of an $832,598 payment for get-out-the-vote efforts to a consulting firm affiliated with ACORN, the community organizing group that became a top target for Republicans alleging voter fraud.
And FEC analysts over the course of the campaign have written more than a dozen letters to Obama singling out hundreds of contributors for whom the campaign either didn’t supply adequate information or from whom he accepted donations exceeding the $4,600 limit.
Spokesman LaBolt said the campaign has corrected errors as it was made aware of them. It’s not at all unusual for the FEC to send many such letters – “requests for additional information” in agency parlance – to big-money campaigns. McCain’s campaign received at least a dozen, for instance.
But the media – first conservative outlets then mainstream publications – seized on the FEC letters to Obama, singling out donations from apparently fictitious donors as well as from foreign addresses – which are permitted as long as the donors are U.S. citizens. Allegations that the Obama campaign was willfully allowing foreign donations and excessive donations blossomed in the conservative blogosphere and prompted the Republican National Committee to file an FEC complaint.
Seizing on Obama’s reversal on a pledge to accept public financing if his Republican opponent agreed to do the same, as well as his campaign’s refusal to voluntarily release the names, addresses and employers of donors who gave less than $200 each – a group that accounted for about half of the more than $600 million that the campaign had raised through the end of September – the RNC asked the FEC “to immediately conduct a full audit” of all of Obama’s contributions.
It’s very rare for a complaint to trigger an audit, campaign finance insiders say. And ironically, the historic volume of Obama’s small contributions, which may have made it tough for the campaign to weed out problem donations, may also help spare Obama an audit.
That’s because the byzantine formula the FEC staff uses to determine whether a campaign has engaged in “substantial” violations of federal election rules – the trigger to recommend an audit to commissioners – takes into account the size of the campaign’s coffers, according to David Mason, who served as a Republican appointee to the FEC until this year.
“So if a House campaign makes a $100,000 error, that’s huge and they’re likely to get audited,” he said. “If a campaign the size of the Obama campaign has a $100,000 error, then maybe not. It would depend on what the error is, obviously,” he said, explaining that mere accounting snafus are unlikely to prompt an audit. More serious and systemic problems, such as illegal contributions, result in campaigns getting tagged with more “audit points,” Mason explained. “If you get enough audit points, you get audited,” he said, adding “nobody outside the commission would know how many audit points the Obama campaign has.”
Mary Brandenberger, an FEC spokeswoman, declined to comment on the likelihood of an Obama audit. But she explained that if campaigns adequately answer the agency’s requests for information, it’s less likely they’ll be recommended for an audit.
Even if Obama’s campaign reached the audit recommendation trigger point, it’d be tough to muster the majority commission vote necessary to initiate the audit. That’s because the FEC is comprised of three Democratic commissioners and three Republicans and, as such, is prone to deadlock on partisan issues.
Well now! Isn’t that comforting? NOT!
So McCain, who made available information on every single donation, will be audited and charged a small fortune for it, while The One, who has been far from transparent, will likely not.
Nope. He won’t be asked any embarassing questions about all those cartoon characters and people such as Doo Dad, employed by Loving and who’s supervisor is listed as You. Not to mention all those who donated purposely under false names to see if the fact that the name on the credit card was different than that of the donor would trigger any vetting process to make certain the donations were legal, legitimate and allowable. NOT!
What a crock! The One proves the saying ”Crime doesn’t pay.” is not true. At least not in American politics!
CQ
