’)Don’t do it.
Please don’t do it.
Seriously. Don’t. Do. It.
I’m sure this is just coming from John McCain because he’s a golly gosh stand-up guy, right?
Hammering Senator Barack Obama for a fourth straight day, Senator John McCain said here on Friday that he expects Senator Obama to abide by his pledge use public financing for his general election if Mr. McCain does so as well.
Here’s the deal: McCain is pushing this because McCain knows that going into the fall the Democrats will pound the GOP into the sand on fundraising. More Democrats are voting and caucusing, more Democrats are volunteering, more Democrats are excited about their 
candidates.
For the first time ever, the Democratic party is outraising the Republican party. The party and its candidate will have the resources to compete on a huge playing field, not just shoring up its blue state base and courting voters in swing states, but there will also be the ability to truly compete in those red states the GOP is holding on to by a thread.
This election could be the one that knocks back conservatism for ten years to a generation.
Don’t give up that advantage. This is the equivalent of the opposing coach asking the Bulls to bench Michael Jordan in his prime.
You don’t bench Jordan and you don’t cave in to John McCain’s campaign finance bull.
DON’T DO IT BARACK!
I agree, it would be really dumb for him to do it.
I might do something like “Ok, public financing. But the first 527 or other entity that collects a dime for use against this campaign, I’m going to begin collecting money to rebut them. I can’t unilaterally disarm to allow the SwiftBoaters that McCain employs (see http://mediamatters.org/items/200612140001 ) to spend unlimited amounts of cash to lie about me or this campaign.”
Or something like that. It’d be utterly defensible and true, too.
McCain signed up for public financing in the Primary, and then later backed out when convenient.
Therefore, McCain has proven that he cannot be trusted not to weasel around the spending limits. So Obama should not be expected to stick to the limits himself.
He better not do it. This is the time to smack McCain and conservatism around.
I say crush him fund-raising and then crush him in the election. Then bring up campaign finance reform and see how many Republicans jump at it.
Ahh, but you have failed to note the critical piece of data. According to The Washington Post today
So Senator McCain is in an even bigger bind than first appears, being contractually bound to end up in the public financing realm. No wonder he is pushing so hard. Senator Obama should out him, clearly and often.
At the end of the day, there’s no chance Obama will fall for all this.
What he might do is pivot on all this and use the opportunity to remind everyone that he’s not taking PAC money.
More fiscal responsibility from the right, I see.
Would it really be THAT stupid, as Dems could channel $$ throgh MoveOn, etc… ?
I was watching McCain’s eyes as he made that statement. He kept shifting them from side to side and looking around to see if someone was going to catch him in a lie, or at least stretching the hell out of the truth. Somehow I don’t think Obama or anyone in their right mind would fall for this garbage and McCain is just trying to posture himself to get in better with his neocon party members.
McCranky gives Obama the perfect out. His public finance shenanigans in the primary make it easy for Obama to simply say “I can’t trust McCranky to abide by the system.” After all, McCranky did not borrow against public funds. His loan was contingent on him opting out of public funds, then if his campaign took off and he became the nominee, the new donations would pay off his loans. If his campaign tanked, he would opt back in to the public financing and use the money to pay back the loan. In other words, Mr. Straight Talk gamed the system.