Common Cause Calls on Obama to Do Something He'll Never Do

Left-wing advocacy group Common Cause wants Barack Obama to close down his personal political army.

The president of the United States should close down his new lobbying, advocacy and fund-raising organization, says a left-wing group that has long sought to reduce the role of donations in politics.

“If President Obama is serious about his often-expressed desire to rein in big money in politics, he should shut down Organizing for Action and disavow any plan to schedule regular meetings with its major donors,” said Bob Edgar, president of Common Cause, which helped pass the 2002 campaign finance law.

The president has converted his 2012 presidential campaign into a permanent campaign/spam machine. No other president has had what amounts to his own personal political action faction engaged in the way that OfA is constantly engaged on Obama’s behafl. He is not going to give that up, not just because Common Cause asks him to. Right now Organizing for Action! (it needs the exclamation point) is literally selling quarterly access to the president for $500,000 checks. He already sold plum government posts to big money donors. Jay Carney just runs away from questions about it. But OfA steams along, Hoovering up money that it uses to keep Obama’s faithful stirred up.

Obama promised that he wouldn’t do any of this when he ran in 2007 — he was the candidate of hope and change who would end politics as usual. He didn’t end politics as usual, though, he built a whole new edifice on it. Like all of his other promises, Obama’s promise to end political corruption came with an expiration date.