Polling and Trolling
Instead of blaming McCain-Feingold, Mr. Romney should look in the mirror.

Monday, November 19, 2007

PUSH POLLING -- asking voters questions designed to spread negative information about a candidate rather than to elicit voters' views -- is a despicable technique. It's even more distasteful when used, as it apparently has been in the case of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, to smear a candidate's faith. Voters in New Hampshire and Iowa have reported receiving calls about Mr. Romney's Mormon faith, including queries as to whether callers knew he received U.S. military deferments as a missionary in France or that Mormons did not accept African Americans as bishops until the 1970s. Mr. Romney is right to denounce this tactic. He is wrong to blame the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law for the development.

"I think the real fault here is McCain-Feingold . . . and the monster that it is," Mr. Romney told CNBC's Kudlow & Company. "It's just wrong, it's un-American and it's one reason McCain-Feingold ought to be repealed." Who is behind the push polls and who is funding them, Mr. Romney said, are "hard to know because, under McCain-Feingold, there's no requirement that these groups identify who they are or that we know what kind of financing is being provided and what kind of organizations they might be affiliated with. It's really -- it's really a very unfortunate piece of legislation."

But Arizona Sen. John McCain -- not coincidentally one of Mr. Romney's opponents in the GOP race -- championed a law requiring disclosure of donors and spending by the kind of groups about which Mr. Romney complains. And the subsequent McCain-Feingold measure reflected an effort, if anything, to require additional disclosure and put additional limitations on such groups. Mr. Romney may argue that an unintended consequence of the law was to divert money to shadowy groups, but we don't see him endorsing further changes.

Indeed, it has been opponents of the statute, chief among them National Right to Life Committee general counsel -- and key Romney adviser -- James Bopp Jr., who have fought the law's efforts to crack down on these groups. Mr. Bopp won a Supreme Court victory last year that may well have eviscerated the ability of the Federal Election Commission to require that these groups comply with the contribution limits and reporting requirements of federal election law. As the FEC considers regulations implementing the Supreme Court ruling, Mr. Bopp has argued for giving outside groups more leeway to run sham issue ads attacking candidates. Mr. Bopp contends that the agency's after-the-fact efforts to crack down on groups such as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are no longer valid after the Supreme Court ruling and that labor unions and corporations that run last-minute ads mentioning candidates shouldn't even have to disclose their funding. Mr. Romney's complaint isn't with McCain-Feingold, it's with his own campaign.