Obama's duplicity with lobbyists continues

Second verse, same as the first
Herman's Hermits, Henry the Eighth I Am, 1965.

Okay, here we go again. Barack Obama is trying to claim he's untainted by those nasty Washington lobbyists.

From this morning's USA Today:

Barack Obama often boasts he is "the only candidate who isn't taking a dime from Washington lobbyists," yet his fundraising team includes 38 members of law firms that were paid $138 million last year to lobby the federal government, records show.

Those lawyers, including 10 former federal lobbyists, have pledged to raise at least $3.5 million for the Illinois senator's presidential race. Employees of their firms have given Obama's campaign $2.26 million, a USA TODAY analysis of campaign-finance data shows.

Thirty-one of the 38 are law firm partners, who typically receive a share of their firms' lobbying fees. At least six of them have some managerial authority over lobbyists.

Let's take a look back at earliest Obama duplicity on the subject of lobbyist money and his presidential campaign touting "Change."

From the Columbia Journalism Review on February 15:

Saturday night at a Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Richmond, Virginia, Barack Obama did it again. He said he hadn't taken money from lobbyists. The election, he said, was boiling down to "a choice between debating John McCain about lobbying reform with a nominee who's taken more money from lobbyists than he has, [presumably Hillary Clinton] or doing it with a campaign that hasn't taken a dime of their money because we've been funded by you the American people." That he does not take money from lobbyists or from political action committees (PACs) is a point Obama often makes on the campaign trail, and his no-dirty-money rhetoric has positioned him as the candidate brave enough to shun business as usual in Washington. In November in Iowa, he said corporate lobbyists "have not funded my campaign." And in December he said in a New Hampshire Public Radio program, "I intend to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over, that they had not funded my campaigns…" His message of financial purity is catching on. For just one recent example, a student writing in The Daily Evergreen, the student newspaper at Washington State University, told his readers last week that Obama has been careful not to compromise himself, "rejecting campaign support from Political Action Committees and lobbyists."

The word "lobbyist" seems to have a particular meaning in Obama's campaign vocabulary. His stump speeches imply that he is not taking money from people who want things from the government and push for them. The reality is that he has.

From Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times on December 16:

White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was forced to revise a critical stump line of his on Saturday -- a flat declaration that lobbyists "won't work in my White House" after it turned out his own written plan says they could, with some restrictions.

While John Edwards was still a candidate, Michael Dobbs in his Washington Post Fact Checker blog took aim at both Edwards and Obama on October 22:

They still take money from state lobbyists.

They make no attempt to distinguish between lobbyists for big corporations and lobbyists for small non-profits. They treat a lobbyist for Haliburton in the same way as a lobbyist for child poverty or cancer research.

They accept money from former lobbyists and future lobbyists.

As Clinton has pointed out, her rivals have no problem taking money from the people who pay the lobbyists, and give them their "marching orders." (ABC News debate, August 19, 2007.)

They have no problem about taking money from people representing other "special interests," e.g. trial lawyers and the hedge fund industry.

So far this year, according to Opensecrets.org, Edwards has taken more than $8 million from lawyers and law firms, some of whom employ the federally-registered lobbyists whose lucre he refuses to touch. Obama is not far behind: $7.5 million. (Clinton has taken $9.2 million.)

From Sweet again, this time on July 31:

White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) touts ethics in a new Iowa spot for this leadoff presidential vote state. The opening scene in the ad is of his announcement speech last February in Springfield. Obama in the spot said he is "extremely proud" that his campaign has refused money from political action committees and federal lobbyists. Former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) also has bragging rights--he only took $20 from PACs.

Obama did take money from PACs and lobbyists for his state senate, U.S. House and U.S. Senate campaigns. "He is leading by example," a narrator in the ad said.Obama embraced the self-imposed ban on PAC and lobbyist money only when he opened his presidential campaign fund in February.

A PAC fact: PACs tend not to be major players in presidential campaign primaries.

Second verse, same as the first? How about tenth verse same as the first?

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Technorati tags: politics Illinois Election Democrats Springfield lobbyists John Edwards PAC John McCain McCain Republican GOP