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Swift Vets, Fast Talkers
by Simon
8/21/2004
There's been alot of talk lately about 527 organizations. These are organizations which are basically PACs, but which have very few limitations on fundraising and have some restrictions about their political ties and on the nature of their ads before elections. George Bush's campaign filed a suit against MoveOn.org, alleging that they have ties to the Kerry campaign. MoveOn has run many ads decrying Bush's economic and defense policies. Today, John Kerry's campaign announced that it is filing a similar suit against the 527 organization Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, alleging it has close ties to the Bush campaign. This group has run several ads about Kerry's military service. One example:
The latest ad, a 30-second spot released Friday, uses segments from Kerry's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971. In the ad, Kerry says, "They had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads," "randomly shot at civilians," and "razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Kahn." The ad does not include Kerry's preface, in which he said he is reporting what others said at a Vietnam veterans conference. Instead, a swift boat group member refers to the statements as "accusations" Kerry made against Vietnam veterans.
While I don't necessarily like these groups, I like the idea of having them around. The existence of these groups is a nice check on our lawmakers. If I don't like a particular policy, I should be allowed to either personally finance or fundraise for a campaign to attack that policy and the people behind the policy. That said, there definitely should be appropriate restrictions on who can be involved with a 527, so that actual candidates do not have control over these potentially unlimited funds. Some restrictions currently exist.
But how, if at all, should candidates react to these groups?
Some of you guys have said that Bush needn't say anything about the swiftboat group's statements about Kerry, and that his inaction is the same thing as Kerry's inaction concerning MoveOn- that it's a sleazy, yet fair game. I don't think that any of these statements are illegal(although their campaign ties might be), but I think that in contrast with the Swiftboat Veteran's group, MoveOn at least focuses on policies, though they sometimes are misleading as well. As I've said, I think that support and criticism of a politician's policy decisions are a good use of the 527 designation. However the Swiftboat group's tactics completely avoid discussing Kerry's voting record(in which I'm sure they can find ammo, ie when you hear the term "flip-flop" nowadays what comes to mind?) and instead have really launched a pure character assassination campaign. Bush has come out against 527's in general, while specifically criticizing MoveOn.org and saying nothing about the Swiftboat Veterans. While there is no legal need for either candidate to make any mention of these groups, I think given the nature of the two groups' respective tactics, more can be gleaned from the Bush campaign's silence about the SVFT than from Kerry's silence about MoveOn.org. Kerry's silence implies that he supports criticism of Bush. Bush's silence implies that he's OK with character assassination.
Source:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/21/edwards.swiftboat/index.html
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