Freedom Line Blog

Roll Call reports that former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards has been ordered by the Federal Election Commission to repay nearly $2.3 million in misused matching funds.

The FEC’s order follows a legally required audit of Edwards’ campaign after the candidate took taxpayer money in return for capping his expenditures.  It turns out Edwards exceeded the cap and violated the law.  (For those familiar with Edwards’ post-2008 history, it’s no surprise his fiscal excess rose to the level of his personal excess.)

What does this have to do with campaign finance law?  Plenty.

To supporters, one of the goals of campaign finance laws is to increase the amount of transparency in who funds a candidate.  That goal is much easier to achieve when the hook of federal auditing is swallowed along with matching funds.  Like most liberals, John Edwards is relentlessly supportive of increasing government oversight on just about everything.  Now, the very transparency and oversight he championed for others is unearthing all kinds of sordid details he would surely prefer stay out of view.

Maybe Edwards’ inner libertarian will awaken and he’ll become an advocate for less government and more privacy.  If nothing else, he would be well advised in the future to practice a lot more discretion.

According to Politico, the White House thinks dispatching Vice President Joe Biden to rebut Dick Cheney on tomorrow’s Sunday talk shows will make the Obama Administration look good.  Joe’s funny, but he’s no Dick Cheney.  Too bad the former VP won’t have the opportunity to debate Biden head-on, like he did in 2004 with John Edwards.  If you’d like a reminder, here’s the link.

A judge has ordered former John Edwards aide Andrew Young to turn over all copies of an alleged John Ewards/Rielle Hunter sex tape to the court.  As the story goes, Young found the tape in a Hunter hatbox, and Hunter wants it back.

In the public interest (of course), we think all copies should be turned over to the Newseum (preferably the National Enquirer wing) to remind the mainstream media of the story they missed, to remind John Edwards to just go away and to remind the rest of us to always be wary of the personal character of those who seek to lead us.

Not all behind-the-scenes political books definitively scuttle reputations and ambitions. For instance, former Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer’s “Speech-Less: Tales of a White House Survivor” caused a stir among fellow former Bushies, but after less than a month of notoriety, the book took its place on the shelves of the chattering classes to be consumed and forgotten. But “Game Change”, the new book by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann about the behind-the-scenes maneuvering during the 2008 presidential campaign is different. Way different.

Today’s Drudge Report has no less than four distinct links commenting on the book’s contents. There’s confirmation about John Edwards’ affair, and more than you ever wanted to know about his dysfunctional marriage. There are stories about the Clintons attempting to use slights and smears to undermine Barack Obama’s campaign. And of course, there’s more evidence that John McCain did a disservice to Sarah Palin and his supporters by failing to make sure she was prepared to be a Vice President. Oh yeah; don’t be surprised if Harry Reid’s racist remarks about Obama presage a Dodd-like retirement announcement after a health care “reform” bill gets signed.

While the information in this book isn’t likely to impact the 2010 congressional races because they’ll be a referendum on the Democrats’ control of Washington, the same can’t be said for which Republican candidates become serious presidential contnders in 2012. My guess is that the people most interested in this book are the politicos and journalists that make up the GOP establishment. Most of the sources denigrating Palin since the campaign are the moneymen and professional staff that have a hand in every presidential contest. They’ve seen her act before, and no amount of Tea Party support is going to persuade them to promote her to the top of the ticket next time around. And now they have a printed counter-argument to Palin’s “Going Rogue”.

All of which poses the question of who benefits the most from Palin’s likely marginalization? Probably Mitt Romney. While keeping a low media profile compared to Palin’s book tour and Mike Huckabee’s television show, Romney is doing the kind of chit building that wins primaries. Through his PAC and endorsements he’s currently in full back-scratching mode. Come campaign season, it will be time to cash in those chits for generous, top-down support.