Watergate became famous, but the real scandal of the 1972 election was the Committee to Reelect the President, popularly known as “CREEP”, whose highly dubious tactics gave Richard Nixon a crushing advantage over George McGovern. While Nixon would have won in any event, he was the type to fix a sure thing.
In the last week of this year’s campaign – perhaps too late to matter – we learn that Nixon and CREEP have spiritual descendants in the entourage of Barack the Wealth-Spreader.
A week ago, one could reasonably assume that the Obama campaign’s failure to take elementary precautions against credit card fraud was mere amateurishness. That assumption is getting harder to square with the facts. Asked about its disabling of security precautions like address verification and CCV checking, The One’s spokesmen insist that they rigorously scrutinize contributions after receipt. We have their word for it!
A couple of e-commerce professionals have set up a Web site (Obama Shrugged) to look further into the matter. From them we learn that turning off security not only takes extra effort but incurs extra fees. Then, too, back-end checking is rendered more difficult and expensive by the absence of tools to detect credit cards submitted with phony names or addresses. At some level, the Obama camp made a conscious decision not to take basic precautions against fraud and was willing to pay for the privilege. There are only two possibilities here: stark incompetence or intentional abetting of criminal activity. Take your pick.
Did Barack Obama handle this matter personally? Probably not. Does he know about it now? How couldn’t he? The Washington Post is merely the latest to discover “Obama Accepting Untraceable Donations”. Has Senator Obama ordered security restored? Has he fired anybody? Is he embarrassed that his subordinates defend their missteps instead of rushing to correct them? Not so far.
We also learn, again belatedly, that the campaign’s denial of connections with the ACORN fraud machine is not precisely true. That it had paid $800,000 to an ACORN subsidiary was already known (except to people who rely for information on the MSM, of course). The latest news is that, according to an ACORN worker testifying in court, it also turned over lists of its big donors, so that ACORN could solicit money from people who had given the legal maximum to Obama’08.
How crooked is ACORN? A “natural experiment” gives us a clue. Threatened with prosecution last year, the organization’s King County, Washington, chapter agreed to abide by election laws, and the local authorities have enforced the agreement. The result: Its haul of new “voters” has fallen from 37,000 in 2004 to 500 this year.
Between CREEP and ACORN, or between stuffing cash into suitcases and accepting credit cards without verification, is not a long distance. Extrapolate to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Perhaps an Obama Presidency will be less Jimmy Carter’s second term than Richard Nixon’s third.
Further reading: PowerLine, “Obama Shrugged: An Update”Neil Munro, “FEC Rules Leave Loopholes for Online Donation Data”
Neil Munro, “Common Web Tools Make Tracking Donors Doable”
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