06 October 2008

GOP Asks FEC to Look into Obama: Pot, Meet Kettle--Again.

The Republican Party has just chosen a new means of attacking Senator Obama--and it has already backfired.

Yesterday, the RNC announced that it was requesting that the Federal Elections Commission investigate excessive contributions to Obama's campaign. Oddly enough, today, we learn that the FEC is currently investigating excessive contributions to McCain's campaign:

The FEC sent a letter to Sen. John McCain's campaign treasurer Sept. 30 demanding the candidate turn over more information about "contributions that appear to exceed the limits."

The letter is accompanied by a nine-page list showing scores of overages from McCain's August campaign finance report, including nearly $13,000 from Texas rancher Ray R. Barrett Jr.; $9,200 from an Iraqi security consultant, H. Carter Andress; and $5,000 from Joseph F. Davolio, an executive at a major national liquor, beer, and wine distributor. (Mosk)

So was the RNC's action an attempt to deflect the news about the McCain investigation as well as providing a new way of trying to link Obama to fraud? If so, both might well have failed.

The attempt to suggest improprieties are present within the Obama campaign, when those improprieties are actually occurring within the McCain campaign isn't new. The other week The McCain campaign began attacking Obama on the nebulous connections between the Obama campaign and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac officials, Franklin Raines and James Johnson. Then the media revealed that the McCain campaign had much tighter links to Fannie and Freddie via Rick Davis and William Timmons, Sr. Perhaps the McCain camp opened the Raines/Johnson attack to try and deflect the upcoming Davis/Johnson revelations. Regardless, the latter certainly nullified the former, and it looks like the FEC's investigation into McCain just nullified the GOP's accusations over contributions to Obama .

Update, 2/28/09: The FEC has cleared Senator McCain of any wrongdoing.

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