Democrats Are Suddenly Just Fine with Undisclosed Donors

Just in case you weren’t convinced that the White House’s “anonymous foreign donors” scare-mongering during the midterm campaigns last year was a complete fabrication, the Los Angeles Times provides all the evidence you need:

Democrats putting together new independent political organizations for the 2012 campaign are embracing a model that will allow them to conceal their donors — the very tactic for which they criticized Republicans in 2010.

Two former Obama White House officials, Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney, are behind the planning of one of these groups, which will lend support to the president’s reelection bid. “As a spokesman for Obama, Burton repeatedly hammered Republican groups for their lack of transparency in 2010,” the Times reports.
“This is stunning in its hypocrisy,” said Jonathan Collegio, spokesman for American Crossroads.
But it’s not just hypocrisy. Democrats had no problem taking money from undisclosed donors in the past, and even did so during the midterms—in between criticizing Republicans for the same thing, of course. And after all of the unfounded attacks on the Chamber of Commerce, the dark insinuations about the GOP’s reliance upon “anonymous foreign donors,” and the phony posturing about transparency, the Democrats’ decision to ramp up their fundraising from undisclosed donors further illustrates the political cynicism of the White House’s strategy last fall.
Listen to Obama adviser David Axelrod on State of the Nation last October:

They say, trust us, trust us, everything is cool, everything is kosher, don’t worry about it, but we’re not going to disclose. Let me tell you something: people don’t disclose, there’s a reason. Ask these folks why they feel it’s necessary to keep these funds secret. We tried to make them public, even the Democratic funds, Democratic-leaning funds. We don’t think anybody should keep these things secret.

Supreme Court ruled
corporations can campaign
for candidates...

The White House should be kicking itself for its strategy. If Obama ends up taking a significant amount of money from these groups, assertions like Axelrod’s will undoubtedly come back to haunt him.

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