Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Reince Priebus fired off a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder today calling for an investigation into hundreds of millions of dollars in undisclosed Obama campaign contributions.
"[T]he President's campaign committee does not use the industry standard practices to guard against receiving fraudulent or excessive contributions via the internet," Priebus alleges in the letter. "As a result, the President's campaign committee is vulnerable to the receipt of prohibited contributions. Their failure to adhere to the industry standard has caused these questions regarding whether the campaign is deliberately inviting prohibited contributions."
We're talking about Eric "Fast and Furious" Holder here, so it's let's call it "pretty likely" that Priebus isn't looking for a whole lot of fast action. What he is looking to do, though, is to call some media attention to the issue. Hope does spring eternal.
For four years now, we've all wondered why a media so obsessed with things like Mitt Romney's tax returns (which the IRS have seen) and what private individuals do with their own money in the form of super PACs, is not at all curious about hundreds and hundreds of millions of undisclosed dollars that flooded and are flooding into Obama's '08 and '12 campaign coffers.
That was a joke.
We actually know precisely why the media's not interested -- they're worried that what they find might hurt Obama.
And now, with the release of
a bombshell report that points to glaring and seemingly intentional security gaps in Obama's online fundraising juggernaut, the media looks like they might have good reason to worry. The report proves beyond any doubt that the potential for illegal overseas monies to flood into the Obama campaign and remain undisclosed thanks to a ridiculous (in the Internet age) $200 FEC cut-off, is almost limitless.
But as of today, though no one has refuted the report's major findings, the media is less interested in this potential scandal than even the real scandal surrounding Libya. Day after day after day, the Obama campaign keeps chumming its pet media-sharks with distractions like Big Bird and abortion. And day after day after day, the sharks are more than happy to manufacture a frenzy that obscures the real issues -- like hundreds of millions of dollars in undisclosed campaign contributions.
Because the IRS has seen Romney's taxes and most of us couldn't care less about what private people do with their own money in the form of super PACs (unlike a pile of Obama money, super PAC money is publicly disclosed), those media obsessions have nothing to do with accountability or transparency.
The Obama campaign wanted Romney bloodied with his tax returns, and the corrupt media of course obliged. Moreover, the media lost all interest in toxifying super PACs once they figured out Obama wasn't going to be at a fundraising disadvantage. But hundreds of millions of undisclosed dollars going right into a sitting president's campaign coffers is a major story, whether the corrupt media wants to pretend it is or not.
In 2008, McCain disclosed the names and addresses of all his donors, including those under $200.
Obama did not.
In 2012, both Romney and Obama should be pressured to do the same. And if I were Romney, I would follow up on this letter by doing exactly that.
