"Republican Rodent, Rick Lazio"

by The Cranky Media Guy

Rick Lazio

You really have to do some soul-searching to name as Weasel of the Week someone running against Hillary Clinton.  Nevertheless, Rick Lazio qualifies.  (Just for the record, this doesn't mean that Hillary isn't of the species rodentia herself.)

Anyway, Lazio gets the nod this week because of his phony crusade against "soft money".  As you may know, this is money not donated directly to a political campaign.  Unlike "hard money" contributions, which have controls on them, soft money is the Wild Wild West of American politics.  Any group or organization can donate how ever much they want in soft money, no limits.

Hillary and Lazio were debating the other day in Buffalo.  The issue of soft money came up and Lazio went for the jugular.  He left his podium--GASP!--and attempted to hand Hillary a pledge to not accept soft money for the remainder of the campaign.  It got a lot of play in the news media the next day and, like most things that get a lot of play in the news media, it was straight off the floor of the horse barn.

I assume that Rick Lazio has heard of a guy named Tom Delay.  Delay is the Republican congressman who says that to try to limit how much an individual or organization can contribute to a campaign is an infringement of freedom of speech.  I have no idea how long it took Delay to come up with that idiotic distortion of the intent of the First Amendment, but I guess it was the best he could come up with to defend the indefensible.  Anyhoo, since it's the position of the Republican party that anyone ought to be able to give as much as they want to any campaign, what's all this horse manure Lazio's spreading about wanting to limit soft money?  Gee, do you think that this just might have something to do with the fact that Hillary is kicking his ass in terms of how much soft money she's raised?  You want to look me in the eye and say that Lazio would feel the same way if he had the bulging bank account?

Secondly, the whole thing's moot anyway, 'cause there's nothing either Hillary or Lazio can do about an outside group that decides it wants to spend money to support or attack either one of them.  If I can slap together a Committee to Run Hillary Out Of Town and raise money to run TV ads, who would have any ability to stop me?  If I was truly independent of the Lazio campaign, I could do whatever I pleased.  No ban on soft money would have any effect on my crusade at all.

As usual, this attempt at "reform" by a political candidate is hypocritical nonsense.  If Hillary wasn't kicking his skinny ass in the polls, Lazio wouldn't be on his high horse about this at all.  Oh, while I'm thinking of it, since the election is over in early November, isn't mid-September pretty late in the game to suddenly be raising the issue of fund-raising?  Just wondering.

Like I said, Hillary certainly has her rodent-like qualities, but this time around, Rick Lazio is the Weasel of the Week.

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