Hypocrisy, thy name is Democrat

There was an interesting exchange on “This Week” this past Sunday between DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. (ABC doesn’t provide transcripts, so I’ll try to relay the conversation.) Host George Stephanapoulos asked McAuliffe if the Democrats would start raising “soft money” now that an appeals court overturned much of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law. McAuliffe hedged a little, then said that DNC lawyers were looking into the legality of raising unregulated money until the Supreme Court gives the final say on the matter. Since it was McAuliffe, it goes without saying that his body language sent out the vibe that he was being dishonest (again).

Lindsey Graham jumped at the bait, declaring in no uncertain terms that CFR was good legislation, good for the country, and that the Republicans intended to follow the law. In one swoop stroke, McAuliffe was covered with the stink of a money-grubbing politico while Graham smiled in his cleanliness. And why shouldn’t the Republicans support McCain-Feingold? As this Washington Post story notes:

Some Democrats do not feel they have time to wait. With a soft-money ban in place, Republicans raised more than three times as much as Democrats during the first three months of this year. In recent years, Democrats had much better luck raising seven-figure checks from union leaders, trial lawyers and Hollywood moguls.

The same WashPost article starts out with this paragraph that could have been written by Karl Rove:

Democrats today are kicking off a roundabout way of helping to finance their 2004 congressional campaigns with the very type of unlimited donations from corporations, unions and individuals that many party leaders had vowed to flush from the political system. [Emphasis mine]

After castigating Republicans as being in the pocket of big business, it was the Democrats who agitated for McCain-Feingold (see: “Democrats push campaign finance reform”). Now that they are being hoisted by their own petard, they’ve decided to break circumvent their own law.