McCain Bites Self!

An early decision to try to stick the American taxpayer with the bill for his then floundering presidential campaign has come back to bite Republicrat "maverick" John McCain right in his... uh, "senate seat."

McCain signed up for federal matching funds (with all the strings attached) when his campaign was financially strapped last year. Now that the private donations are starting to roll in, McCain wants to back out of the arrangement, but the FEC wrote him a letter stating that they can't release him from the contract for those funds.

You see, the FEC doesn't have enough commissioners, or a quorum, to do business. President Bush's nominees to the Commission have been stalled in the senate. The Commission therefore can't vote to approve or deny McCain's withdrawal from the federal funding arrangement.

Why is this important? As the Washington Post explains it: "Life within the public financing system, in which candidate contributions are matched with federal funds, comes with severe spending restrictions. Most notable among them is an overall spending cap of $54 million that would hang over the campaign until McCain officially accepts his party’s nomination at the Republican National Convention in September. McCain has already spent $49 million, according to a report his campaign filed this week[...] Still, the spending restriction would create an enormous crisis for a campaign that had planned to raise and spend huge volumes of money over the next six months." [Emphasis added.]

So the man who made campaign-finance rules the centerpiece of his Senate career now faces the risk of "running aground" (a little navy lingo in McCain's honor) on campaign-finance rules.

In regard to this matter, the McCain campaign today released the following statement: "D'oh!!" A spokesman for Ben and Bawb's Blog (me) pointed and replied, "Ha ha!"