The McCain-Soros connection: where’s the beef?

I am frustrated. A reader sent me a link to an article by Jerome Corsi at WorldNetDaily which says that the evil leftist anti-American billionaire George Soros (my characterization, not Corsi’s) has funded John McCain’s Reform Institute. McCain founded the Reform Institute in 2001 to help advance his campaign finance control scheme (eventually made into law in the form of the McCain-Feingold Act), and serve as a provider of sinecures for former McCain campaign officials, notably one Richard Davis, who got a three figure annual income as a “consultant.” (Nice work, if you can get it, as Frank Sinatra sang.) But Corsi does not provide any evidence that Soros funded the Reform Institute or say how much money Soros gave it. Corsi links a “Captain Ed” Morrissey blog entry from 2005 on the matter, as well as a DiscoverTheNetworks article from 2005 and a Michelle Malkin article from January 2008. But none of them says how much Soros gave to McCain’s organization or even shows definitely that Soros provided any funds at all.

I have thus read four articles, without finding any factual support for WorldNetDaily’s sensational claim, made in the headline of the Corsi article:

John McCain funded by Soros since 2001

It’s late at night, and it’s possible I missed something. If I did, perhaps someone will show it to me. [See further information below.]

- end of initial entry -

Ken Hechtman writes:

This is from the donors page of McCain’s Reform Institute:

Donations above $50,000

Mr. William Bloomfield
Carnegie Corporation of New York
CSC Holdings, Inc.
Echosphere
The Educational Foundation of America
The JEHT Foundation
Mr. Jerome Kohlberg, Jr. Revocable Trust
McMullen Family Foundation
OSI Constitution & Legal Policy Program
Proteus Fund
Mr. Charles H. Spaulding
Stuart Family Foundation
Tides Foundation
American International Group Inc

OSI is Soros’ Open Society Institute. The Proteus Fund is itself a recipient of OSI grants.

Also note that the Tides Foundation is Teresa Heinz-Kerry’s granting agency.

Richard W. writes:

Because the Soros and the Tides (Teresa Heinz Kerry) donations are “over $50,000” we don’t know how much they gave to McCain. $60,000. $600,000. $6 million. It’s an interesting question.

This is from Wikipedia’s article on Soros [the original article has many links which do not display here]:

In an interview With The Washington Post on November 11, 2003,[22] Soros said that removing President George W. Bush from office was the “central focus of my life” and “a matter of life and death.” He said he would sacrifice his entire fortune to defeat President Bush, “if someone guaranteed it”, and many continue to state this as Soros’s position even after Soros clarified the humorous nature of the statement in a Q&A session at the end of his March 3, 2004 address to California’s Commonwealth Club.

Soros gave $3 million to the Center for American Progress, committed $5 million to MoveOn, while he and his friend Peter Lewis each gave America Coming Together $10 million. (All were groups that worked to support Democrats in the 2004 election.) On September 28, 2004 he dedicated more money to the campaign and kicked off his own multi-state tour with a speech: Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush[23] delivered at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

The online transcript to this speech received many hits after Dick Cheney accidentally referred to FactCheck.org as “factcheck.com” in the Vice Presidential debate, causing the owner of that domain to redirect all traffic to Soros’s site.[24]

Soros was not a large donor to US political causes until the U.S. presidential election, 2004, but according to the Center for Responsive Politics, during the 2003-2004 election cycle, Soros donated $23,581,000 to various 527 Groups dedicated to defeating President Bush. Despite Soros’ efforts, Bush was reelected to a second term as president in U.S. presidential election, 2004.

After Bush’s reelection in 2004, Soros and other wealthy liberal political donors backed a new political fundraising group called Democracy Alliance which aims to support the goals of the U.S. Democratic Party.[25][26]

Soros has been criticized for his large donations, as he also pushed for the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 which was intended to ban “soft money” contributions to federal election campaigns. Soros has responded that his donations to unaffiliated organizations do not raise the same corruption issues as donations directly to the candidates or political parties.

A Republican National Committee spokeswoman said,

“It’s incredibly ironic that George Soros is trying to create a more open society by using an unregulated, under-the-radar-screen, shadowy, soft-money group to do it. George Soros has purchased the Democratic Party.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 15, 2008 01:57 AM | Send