OPINION:
Hillary Rodham Clinton opened her campaign with a pledge to push for campaign finance reform, but just weeks into the race she has abanodened that pledge and plans to personally solicit huge money from a friendly super PAC.
After announcing her candidacy, Clinton said, “We need to fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccountable money out of it once and for all, even if that takes a constitutional amendment.”
But Clinton has spent the last few weeks skipping across the country collecting cash. She pitched the idea that because the fundraising efforts included low-priced tickets, she is the candidate for “everyday Americans.”
But now, in what some analysts are saying is a first, Clinton will skirt the spirit of campaign laws and make a personal pitch to big-money donors, personally asking them to write massive checks for Priorities USA, a super political action committee intent on putting her in office.
As always, Clinton plays the victim: Her campaign and her supporters say she is simply stuck in an unfair race and that other candidates are doing it, so she is forced to, too.
As a senator, Clinton voted in 2002 in favor of the McCain-Feingold Act, which limits soft money and political campaign advertising. In 2007, said: “I believe we have to move, eventually in our country, toward a system of public financing that really works for candidates running for federal office. I will support that as president.”
Of course, the incredible amounts of “unaccountable” money pouring into her 2008 presidential campaign coffers allowed her to opt out of public financing — the first campaign in 30 years to completely do so, according to the Associated Press.
“Just three weeks ago, Hillary Clinton decried unaccountable money in politics and even called for amending the Constitution to ban it,” Jeff Bechdel, communications director for America Rising, told CBS News. “Today, she announced she’s going to personally court donors and raise money for her own super PAC. … Clinton’s hypocrisy knows no bounds.”
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