Once more, into the breach, because
this fairly interesting overview in the Chronicle of Higher Education of the campaign finance law/internet fight might leave you wondering about a few assertions by Carol Darr,
bête noire of the
issue. So read the article and
accompanying chat, and then let's review a few points:
1. Did Carol Darr and the reform community win anything from the FEC regulations?
No.
While it's true that online paid advertising will be regulated, that's not something which any blogger opposed. Whether it's the generally right-leaning Online Coalition ("the Commission should move forward with its proposal to include the term 'paid advertisements on the Internet' under the definition of 'public communication') or our own filing ("proposed regulations amending 11 CFR §§ 109.21 and 109.37 regarding coordinated communications are within the proper scope of the regulations"), no bloggers opposed this common-sense step.
On every issue where we parted from the reform community, however, we won and they lost. The FEC did the following things that we supported and they opposed:
* granting a full, robust media exception to speakers on the Internet
* protecting expressly partisan behavior by bloggers, including fundraising, without falling into political committee status, as opposed to Darr's demand that "the FEC must insist that anyone who avails him or herself of the media exception should not operate as a political activist (including raising money) in the same election"
* removing nonsensical "1 hour per week, 4 hours per month" restrictions on the use of office computers for online political activity and replacing it a "are you getting your work done, and is anyone coercing you to engage in politics?" standard
* exempting state party websites from pain-in-the-ass rules on allocation
Note: I posed the question to Darr in the chat: "Carol, given that no bloggers in their comments and testimony before the FEC opposed extending McCain-Feingold to paid online advertising, and given that the FEC seemed to take the bloggers' side on every issue in dispute (robust media exemption, explicit support for partisan and fundraising activity online, etc.) . . . how, exactly, was this a victory for your views?"
She declined to respond to any question I posed in the chat, and, for what it's worth, has declined to appear at a panel on this issue to which we were both invited next month.
2. Some bloggers were mean to Carol Darr. Rude and obscene, even.
Regrettably, yes. Still, sometimes life is tough; carry an umbrella. Whining to the FEC about it just takes it to another level, however.
Seriously, gang? Just saying that someone is wrong ought to be enough.
3. A broad media exception "will end up gutting campaign-finance law."
Darr has never explained how anything other than a broad media exception is consistent with the first amendment, such as her regret that "the statute, the old regs, and the precedents made it difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between traditional media and new media/bloggers."
Darr has never explained why you'd ever want to make such a distinction, or why bloggers are more of a problem than General Electric, a major defense contractor, owning a television network.
4. There's a big new problem with "undisclosed foreign money".
Four times in the chat, Darr invokes this new fear that the after the Commies sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids, they're going to take over our blogs. It's not something that was raised in the entire year before the FEC handed down its decision, and it's no more a problem on the Internet than it is elsewhere. Just who owns Fox News and the Washington Times, anyway?
5. See the Swift Boats? That's a problem!
As Atrios notes, "While there was some internet-based colloborative research which went into the publication of the Regnery book Unfit for Command, the book was, it must be said, published on paper. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were a 527 organization with big money backers which got their message out through paid advertising in our mainstream media, as well as through immense amount of free media coverage on, but not limited to, cable news and talk radio. Bloggers talked up the story, as they did any campaign story, but the prominence of the Swift Boat Liars in our media had absolutely nothing to do with the existence of the internet."
6. Ooh! But the Thune bloggers! Evil I tells ya, evil!
One more time: That the Thune bloggers were paid was disclosed in FEC filings as early as the second-quarter 2004 report, and in an August 9 article in the Argus-Leader. That no one picked up on it is Tom Daschle's campaign's fault. Now-Sen. Thune obeyed the disclosure laws which applied then as to all campaign disbursements, and still apply today.
IN GENERAL, I think it's natural to try to spin defeat as victory, and to have a number of "oh, I meant to say that!" moments with her colleagues supporting her to try to make it seem like one's positions at the time were not, in fact, one's positions at the time. I think the record is clear, and speaks for itself.
Bottom line? We won, they lost, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.