Obama Hypocrisy on Campaign Finance

During the 2008 election campaign, then-Senator Barack Obama knocked fellow candidate John Edwards for benefiting from the same outside spending groups he criticized:

“So you can’t say yesterday you don’t believe in them, and today you have three quarters of a million dollars being spent on you. You can’t just talk the talk. The easiest thing in the world is to talk about change during election time.”

Priorities USA, a super PAC headed by Bill Burton – former Deputy Press Secretary at the Obama White House – launched a television ad campaign attacking Republicans today. A super PAC is a federal PAC that only makes independent expenditures in support or opposition of candidates. These super PACs were made possible because of the Citizens United and Speech Now cases.

President Obama made it a daily habit to bash the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court decision last year. From his weekly radio addresses to speeches on the stump, President Obama seemed obsessed with casting sinister aspersions on the decision. In one instance he ominously said, “But this summer, they’re also seeing a flood of attack ads run by shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names,” like Priorities USA perhaps!

Citizens United was a great victory for free speech and I am sure President Obama and his Democrat friends will take full advantage of it in the 2012 cycle, as is their right. It is just hypocritical that when President Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi were facing historic defeats in the 2010 elections, they claimed the decision would end our Democratic way of life. Now that they see an opportunity to utilize it for the 2012 race, I’m sure our case will suddenly become as American as apple pie.

Citizens United launched a web ad today calling President Obama a hypocrite because he has not called on Priorities USA to take down its television ad as he told John Edwards to do in 2007. President Obama needs to walk the walk. Please share this important ad with your friends.