McCain on Personal Use of Campaign Funds

Earlier today, Politico's Jeanne Cummings wrote about how the Republican National Committee spent $150,000 over the last month on wardrobe items and salon expenses for Palin and her family. When asked about it, the McCain campaign issued a statement basically brushing off the question and saying that there are more important issues to be spending time on right now than Palin's wardrobe expenses. In essence, the McCain campaign is trying to tell us that this incident does not matter.

But does it? The John McCain of 1993 certainly would have told us that it did. In fact, he did so very convincingly during a speech on the Senate floor regarding the abuse of campaign funds. The Daily Kos shares McCain's speech here.

One major reason the public does not approve of Congress is that they believe we are isolated and nonresponsive, and we, of course, do not want to maintain a policy that encourages the Congress to be even more separated and disconnected from the people.

If we in Congress learned one thing from President Clinton's $200 haircut last week, it should be that the public does not approve of its elected officials being treated as royalty. We should be no different.

The solution to this problem is simple; restrict the use of campaign funds solely to campaign purposes.

...

I point out these abuses, in my view what are abuses, because they are certainly not what the average contributor intends for their funds to go to.

Perhaps the real question should be why McCain no longer believes that personal use of campaign funds ought to be a serious issue.