When Obama campaign manager Jim Messina announced earlier this year that donors had the president’s blessing to support the Priorities USA Action super PAC, Messina assured us that “We will do so only in the knowledge and with the expectation that all of its donations will be fully disclosed.” The campaign quickly and characteristically violated this promise when Priorities and its fundraising partner American Bridge 21st Century – another super PAC run by the notorious David Brock of Media Matters – each funneled over $200,000 to themselves from the disclosure-free advocacy groups they are paired with, thus hiding the identity of the money’s donors.
As part of its campaign to defend free speech against increasing attacks from the Left, the Committee for Justice (CFJ) released a video today which holds Obama to account for his hypocrisy on the issues of Super PACs and donor disclosure. Said CFJ President Curt Levey, “Whatever one’s position on disclosure is, the position should at least be consistent. On that count, Obama has failed the American people badly by contradicting himself and breaking his own promise about Super PAC disclosure.”
President Obama once called super PACs “a threat to our Democracy.” He worried they would be used for foreign influence on political campaigns, despite decades of law prohibiting foreign involvement in campaigns. He routinely refers to conservative super PACs as “shadowy groups.” Obama changed his tune on super PACs in February this year, also promising appearances by senior administration officials at campaign events if donors opened their wallets.
But Obama’s new position on super PACs also comes with an additional liability: controversial fabulist David Brock. To help elevate the stature and punching heft of Priorities USA, founder and former White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton joined forces with American Bridge 21st Century, a super PAC and opposition research shop founded by Brock, who remains its treasurer today. In addition to defending his flip-flopping on super PACs, President Obama should call on Burton to repudiate Brock.
The scandalous founder and figurehead leader of Media Matter for America has made a living combatting “…Christian-influenced ideology.” Outcries against Brock’s hateful, anti-religious, anti-Semitic propaganda war and gutter politics have come from all sides. The Simon Wiesenthal Center was concerned, the anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee were also alarmed, liberal Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz promised to campaign against the president if he didn’t distance himself from Brock, and AIPAC spokesman, former Clinton administration official, and former Clinton/Gore spokesman Josh Block has also piled on from the left. Even bombastic MSNBC host Ed Schultz has openly shunned Brock’s outrageous below-the-belt brand of politics.
At a time when pundits compare the president to disgraced former president Richard Nixon for his use of enemies lists, and David Brock finds himself to the left of Ed Schultz on legitimate campaign tactics, President Obama should stand up and divorce himself from this ugly brand of politics. He should call on Bill Burton to dissolve his fundraising partnership with Brock immediately.
The hypocrisy, assault on free speech, and Obama’s win-at-all-costs embrace of Brock would be what Breitbart warned about . . . or, as he told a CPAC audience back in February, that “this isn’t your mother’s Democratic Party.”
Stay tuned to Breitbart News this week for more news out of the Committee for Justice.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.