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Monday, October 11, 2010

You show us your birth certificate and we'll show you our donors...deal?

This is actually funny.  Jake Tapper talks to David Axlerod who demands that the Chamber of Commerce disclose its funding sources.  Then comes this exhange: 
AXELROD: It is a insidious, dangerous thing when people can contribute huge sums of money to run negative ads in campaigns and never confess or allow to their participation. It opens the door to all kinds of chicanery. And when the next Congress meets if there are people who are standing there who are beneficiaries of their campaigns, you’ll know in whose interest they are going to act.

TAPPER: But what do you say to people who argue you are demonizing an organization for a charge that nobody knows if it's true or not?

AXELROD: Well I’m not demonizing the Chamber of Commerce. I’m simply suggesting to them that they disclose the source of the $75 million that they are spending in campaigns and put to rest, put to rest the questions that have been, that have been raised.

TAPPER: Isn't that like the whackjobs that tell the president he needs to show them his full long-form birth certificate so he can put to rest the questions that have been raised?

AXELROD: The president’s birth certificate has been available to people.

TAPPER: The long form?

AXELROD: Someone once in the course of this debate about whether we should have a law to force these organizations to disclose where they’re money is coming from in the campaigns, someone said, and I think they’re right – “the only people who want to keep things secret are folks who have something to hide.” If the Chamber doesn’t have anything to hide about these contributions, and I take them at their word that they don’t, then why not disclose? Why not let people see where their money is coming from?

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