Change we can believe in?
February 26th, 2008 by Press StaffFor all his talk about overcoming partisanship and bringing about change on the campaign trail, Senator Obama is up to the same old tactics inside the Beltway. Rather than allow nominees to the Federal Elections Commission to get an up or down vote, Senator Obama has joined Senator Feingold in blocking the appointments.
On the surface, this seems like business as usual but, in reality, Obama’s obstructionist tactics are working to his advantage on the campaign trail. In a report about Senator John McCain’s request to withdraw from federal financing (after Senator Obama backed down on his own pledge to accept the spending limits that come with the program), CongressDailyAM reports that FEC Chairman David Mason, “cited a statute that says candidates can only withdraw from the program with the ‘vote of our commissioners” on the six-member panel. The FEC now has just two members due to a standoff begun with Obama and Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., put holds on the nomination of Commissioner Hans Von Spakovsky…”
The article later cites Monday’s Wall Street Journal editorial which, “observed that if Obama is ‘promising to end partisanship in Washington…here’s a place to start: He could stop playing politics with the [FEC] in a way that could hamper John McCain’s campaign against, well, Mr. Obama.”