John McCain: Town Hall Meeting 01/13/08

John McCain
Town Hall
Howell, MI 01/13/08

TRANSCRIPT:
QUESTIONER: I would guess that just about everybody in this room would support the idea of Supreme Court justices [...] people who interpret the Constitution as it is. However, in the state of Wisconsin, a group of people I once worked with, Wisconsin Right to Life, when they wanted to express their particular first amendment opinion about the appointment of judges, they got into trouble. And I think you were part of that. Can you explain to me why that's so?

JOHN MCCAIN: The Wisconsin right to life people had wanted to go the normal fashion, in which is to take funds under campaign contribution limits, and from pacts they could have done whatever they wanted to do. My friend, in Washington there is not many people who believe there's not enough special interest money in Washington. What I tried to fix, and what we did fix to a degree was the million dollar checks given by trial lawyers, union leaders and corporate heads. The members of Congress. I saw it, and their legislation was up before their committee that week. And I saw laws being written that favored the special interests enormously, and left out average citizens out of it. The problem with the law on that today is that there's a thing called the 527's. And these 527's have unlimited amounts of money pouring into them. And they're running negative ad campaigns. In case you missed it, one of these was Moveon.org. They ran a full page ad in the New York Times, a picture of General David Patreus, and it said "General Patreus or General Betray Us?" Tell me there's a place in American politics for that kind of insult to an honorable American. I tried to stop that, and it had nothing to do with Right to Life. I happen to have a 24 year pro-life voting record. Anybody who believes there is not enough special interest money; unlimited money around Washington, and there weren't then. Maybe a trip to federal prison, and they asked Jack Abramoff about that. Because I led that investigation and there's former members of congress in federal prison today. And I'm going to continue my efforts to clean it up. And I'm not going to restrict anybody's right to free speech, unless you believe speech- money is speech. If money is speech, then the people with the most money have the biggest microphone. I don't think that's the case.

LABEL: JM MI 1-13 (GR#59) KHED-ClipE

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Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• TRACKING
• McCain
• 527
• moveon.org