Today, Dylan Ratigan at MSNBC was kind enough to let me deliver his daily "rant," a scripted segment at the end of his show. I dedicated mine to Obama's hypocrisy on SuperPACs, and his campaign's deception about small-dollar donors and keeping out lobbyist cash.
Afterwards, I checked on Twitter to see whether MSNBC's liberal audience would appreciate my take. They didn't.
"Tim Carney: blah blah blah. Pick a fight that matters. #rantFail"
"Tim Carney regarding your rant on Dylan Ratigan...stick it. So much silence b4 Obama used the system, now you have an opinion? Stick it!"
"@maddow MSNBC DR Show allows Carney's Call 2 perform a daily rant disrespecting R POTUS. DR & Carney's DISREPECT 4 the position is STUPID!"
Those are the printable ones. I don't this represents the whole Left -- I know plenty of liberals who appreciate it when Obama's hypocrisy on lobbyist cash and big money is called out. But, man, does the President have some loyal followers, for whom any criticism of the President is beyond the bounds of permissible dissent.
The video is above, and below is my script (For all the jokes about Obama and teleprompters, reading from them takes skill.):
After railing against corporate money and SuperPACs for two years, Barack Obama’s campaign announced recently that it would cooperate with a Super PAC called "Priorities USA," which raises money directly from corporations.
Obama’s campaign justifies this reversal on the grounds that Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are doing the same thing, so Obama has no choice.
But hitting up corporations for unlimited contributions is particularly unseemly for an incumbent. Obama will deploy some of his cabinet secretaries to SuperPAC fundraising events. Think about it: Energy Secretary Steven Chu will be hustling for dollars from the same nuclear, coal, solar, and wind companies that he’s currently subsidizing and regulating.
But, oh, it’s all okay, according to Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, because this campaign still rejects lobbyist money and is powered by small donations, right?
Not really.
First, let’s dispel this small-donor myth. While Messina brags that "98 percent of all our donations are $250 or less," these statitics are meaningless. I crunched the numbers in the Obama campaign’s most recent filing, and 79 percent of all itemized donations came from people who had given the campaign $1,000 or more.
And when Obama headlines those big fundraisers, most of the cash he hauls goes to the Democratic National Committee, where the numbers are even starker: 85 percent of all money given to the DNC last filing period came from donors who have given at least $10,000.
And the lobbyist ban? That’s a sham. Just ask Perennial Strategy Group, a self-described "government relations" firm in downtown DC, which gave 5,000 to Obama’s campaign and $30,800 to the DNC. You see, that’s okay, because Perennial de-registered as a lobbying firm last year.
Obama's donor rolls are littered with the CEOs of lobbying firms and Vice Presidents of government affairs at large corporations, plus the spouses of registered lobbyists and recently deregistered lobbyists.
So let's not pretend all the political money stuff is a one sided issue. Both parties will line their coffers with special-interest cash
So the President's people talk of running a cleaner campaign. But the numbers and the facts tell a different story.
