Committees sniping over political ads

Even while Barack Obama (D-IL) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) spare neither tooth nor claw in their battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, the Democratic National Committee has started dipping into its cash reserves to attack presumptive Republican standard-bearer John McCain (R-AZ). And that has the RNC crying foul.

RNC does not like the content of the ad, which focuses on McCain’s earlier 100-years-in-Iraq comments, saying they were taken out of context. But more to the point, it charges that FEC regulations are being violated because DNC has had contact with both the Obama and Clinton campaigns, indicating possible prohibited coordination between candidates and unaffiliated committees.

RBR/TVBR observation: We don’t think RNC has a leg to stand on. Just because DNC spoke with the candidates is no reason to assume they were plotting media campaigns. In fact, it is doing just what it should be doing – providing some generic opposition to the Republican candidate at a time when neither of the Dems still standing are able. At any rate, watch for this kind of back-and-forth all year, and watch for very little to come of it as the understaffed FEC idles without a quorum.

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