Convenience, not principle

For all the protestations of patriotism and public service, the vast majority of our national leaders are less interested in principle than they are political pragmatism. Consider:

Exhibit A: Campaign contributions tend to follow political success, since people want to back winners in the hope of gaining access and influence. So when the Republicans were ascendant after 1994, Democrats decried the influence of their large campaign contributers.

Listen to the crickets chirp now:

Hillary Clinton's campaign for president is a bigger business than the city of Charleston (WV). As of Sept. 30, she had hired 697 people, and raised just slightly less than $80 million. Charleston's budget is less than $70 million.

It takes a village...

By comparison, Republicans are paupers, unable as a group of 10 to raise $80 million combined.

This year, the left is stone cold silent on the "negatives" of big money "buying" elections. I guess when billionaires such as George Soros are signing big checks to groups like MoveOn, you kick campaign finance "reform" to the curb.

Exhibit B: The same people who would shout down presenters with whom they disagree would also love to regulate or ban speech on the public airwaves that is injurious to their pet causes. Seems to me supporting the First Amendment should be a slam dunk. But then, I'm not a triangulating politician...

...the Fairness Doctrine has always had fans in the corridors of power because it gave incumbents a way of muzzling their opponents. The Kennedy administration used it as a political weapon. Bill Ruder, Kennedy's assistant secretary of commerce, explained: "Our strategy was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters and hope that the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue." The Nixon administration similarly used the doctrine to torment left-wing broadcasters.