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In Defense of Obama Passing on Public Campaign Funds

Posted by PAUL SILVER in At TMV.
May 27th, 2008 | Comments

From the Election Law Blog: Senator Obama and the Decision to Opt Out of Public Financing. It’s satisfying reading from people who know what they are talking about.

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DLS

The end justifies the means, including the ruthless jettisoning of a cherished goal of yours you have written about as your trademark on this site.

I'm shocked -- shocked!

mikkel

He shouldn't opt out even if it means being in danger of being outspent. Not only is it a principled stance but he will still have a lot of volunteers putting in the grunt work and that is more effective than ads anyway. I'd guess that they would be a lot sharper working under constraints because the Obama tv/radio ads are the weakest part of his campaign IMO.

Neocon

Even more importantly Barak Obama is in my opinion setting up the presidency to the highest bidder. You know. People from Russia can donate money to Barak Obama or any potential future candidate.

This is a sad day when we can start using Paypal to vote fund our presidents and if paypal is world wide then just where is the special interests coming from?

runasim

"Barak Obama is in my opinion setting up the presidency to the highest bidder"

Yeah, and on the first day, he invented money itself.
Money buying politiical power at all levels, what a novel idea. .How ever did he think of it?

Getting back to reality, I think the high percentage of micro donors is a sign of more democratic healh. Fat cats buying the ability to write laws and bleed the taxpayer financed government is where the problem lies.

PaulSilver

This is a tricky issue for me. I would like to see support for publicly funded finance but not if the result is an unequal playing field. If the candidates have the same amount of money but their supporters do not then it is not a fair contest. I feel that viable campaign finance policy needs to deal with third parties.

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