Today I offered Commentary: Legality of TV Ads by Third Party Groups on NPR’s “Day to Day.” The commentary tracks many of the arguments I made in this L.A. Times oped. Scott Stanzel, spokesperson for the Bush-Cheney reelection committee responded to my commentary here in a “Day to Day” interview with Madeline Brand.
I think the Bush-Cheney committee made a mistake by putting on Stanzel rather than one of their campaign finance lawyers. Stanzel apparently misunderstood the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in McConnell v. FEC, and spoke a bunch of gibberish about “issue ads.” The constitutional question that I raised does not depend upon whether the Moveon ads “promote, support, attack or oppose” a candidate or whether the Moveon ads use words of express advocacy. The question is this: if it is unconstitutional to limit George Soros’s independent spending on ads that oppose Bush, why would it be constitutional to limit contributions of Soros to a group that runs independent ads that oppose Bush, particularly when the group does not sell access to candidates? Stanzel did not even grasp the question, much less provide a cogent answer.