Once Again Victorian Era Republicanism Hurts Republicans

The Right can’t continue to sit back and allow the Left to continue cheating by illegally and improperly raising money without verifying donor identification.

According the various news reports, in the week or so since Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden as the proposed Democrat Presidential Nominee, she has raised over $200 million. Those donations come through the Left’s fundraising tool, ActBlue. To the surprise of no one, ActBlue continues to operate by raising funds with the Card Verification Value (CVV) system turned off. The CVV system ensures that the person making the donation is actually holding the credit card being used. This little trick results in tens of millions of dollars being raised from unknown sources, which likely includes illegal foreign contributions, amounts from individuals above the legal limit, and funds derived from criminal activities. Several investigative reporters have found specific donors who ActBlue reports gave hundreds of thousands of dollars over tens of thousands of small donations. Because the CVV is disabled, ActBlue launders the donations with names and addresses that may not match the credit card used to make the donations. Interviews with those alleged donors reveals they have no knowledge about those donations. 

Shocker. Cue outraged politicians and pundits.

Maddeningly, however, this shifty maneuver by the Democrats isn’t new. Way back in 2008 when Barack Obama first ran for the presidency, his campaign fundraising tool also refused to ask for the CVV number from donors. As noted in a recent Dick Morris op-ed in The Hill:   

In 2008, The Washington Post reported that Mary Biskup was reported to have donated more than $170,000 to the Obama campaign in small donations. But Biskup says she never gave any money to the campaign. Some other donor must have given the money in her name.

Given these past problems and the Obama campaign’s sudden influx of small donors (1.8 million in one month), Newsweek wonders why the campaign does not require CVV numbers to minimize the chances of fraud. 

The magazine noted that the campaign’s past scandals “make it all the more surprising that the Obama campaign does not use … the card verification value [system in 2012].” The magazine added that “the Romney campaign, by contrast, does use the CVV — as has almost every other candidate who has run for president in recent years.”

Thus, Republicans have known for sixteen years that the Left illegally raises money by intentionally disabling the CVV system. That knowledge makes it all the more frustrating that, when it controlled the White House and Congress, Republicans didn’t ram through a law requiring all political campaigns to use the CVV system.

This failure is yet another example of how Victorian Era Republicanism—the mentality that Robert's’ Rules of Order and playing by the rules actually matter—undermines the Right’s ability to compete and to win elections, as money is the lifeblood of all campaigns. The Left doesn’t give a wit about rules and fairness. It only cares about seizing and holding onto political power by any means necessary. With the Right controlling state Attorney General Offices in a majority of states, one has to wonder why all of them aren’t launching massive investigations of ActBlue, including filing emergency actions in courts to issue cease and desist orders requiring ActBlue to use the CVV system. Grounds for the cease and desist action include: foreign interference in U.S. elections, terrorist funding, criminal funding, and domestic interference in U.S. elections.

As of now, only Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares is getting involved. Hopefully, other state AGs will step up aggressively in the coming days—hello, Dave Yost, where are you? The Left already gets an enormous advantage from the favorable earned media it gets from its media sycophants. The Right can’t continue to sit back and allow the Left to continue cheating by illegally and improperly raising money without verifying donor identification. Along with the Right already doing too little to require voter identification in all fifty states, its a wonder they ever win any elections.

P.S. Simply not a good ten days from Team Trump…