Club for Growth

Club and Allies vs. GOP Leadership

Here's a solid article from The Hill newspaper that summarizes the 527 anti-free speech debate:

Battle lines have formed within the GOP, pitting the conservative Club for Growth and its allies against the party's leadership, as the House prepares to take up new limits on 527s.

...[T]he Club for Growth is muddying the ideological waters, arguing that a Republican-backed 527 bill, even one that relaxes caps on aggregate contributions and coordinated campaign spending, violates the party's core principle of deregulated political speech. Club for Growth President Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who served in the House until 2004, has enlisted more than 20 right-leaning advocacy groups in his quest to derail the bill.

Incumbent lawmakers "are basically saying, 'There are people out there criticizing me. ...I have the power; I'll shut them down.' It's outrageous, it's appalling, it's frighteningly similar to what despotic regimes do to newspapers and individuals who criticize them," Toomey said in an interview late last week.

What's truly amazing is that Congressman Tom Cole, who is supporting more restrictions on free speech, basically agrees with the above quote by Pat, but then defends the despotic perspective!

"You have to be politically realistic about this" issue, Cole said. "This is not right to life; it's not as much of a moral question. ...We need to recognize when our opponents have a weapon of this magnitude that they are using to destroy our majority. "To say 'I want to be politically consistent' and let our opponents destroy our majority seems politically misguided."

Time to pick your jaw up off the floor, eh? When politicians like Cole glibly talk about preventing opponents from speaking out against them, I think it's time to be very worried.

Posted by Andrew Roth on April 4, 2006 8:54 PM | Trackback (4) | Print | #