As much as I hate to defend John McCain, the supreme court defined money in the form of campaign donations as "free speech."  That is what John McCain is referring to when he when he is talking about having a clean government versus full first amendment rights.  

Wait, wait wait. We can't have it both ways. I'm no McCain fan, but fair is fair. Do YOU equate money with speech? If so, all hope of campaign finance reform is gone. This is what Republicans do: deliberately misunderstand a clumsily stated position. The man is talking about money, not our ability to critisizethe government.

This doesn't plumb the base level of the RNC turning Francine Busby's shock at learning a teacher was arrested for child porn into an endorsement of child porn but it heads in that direction.

Let the Republicans destroy McCain.  They are good at such things and recognize McCain is not one of them no matter how much he tries to be.

You only hurt the liberal cause with such tactics.

Matt,

I agree with the comments so far.  We don't need to twist and torture McCain's words like this to make a point.  Leave that to the Rethuglicans.  Sure, we need to be mean, tough, sons-of-bitches when taking on our adversaries, but our goal is to defeat them, not to become them.  Let's not use the worst of their tactics.  We can take the fight to them--without fighting like them.

Me, too.  

That said, McCain's rhetoric is fine.  It's his voting that pisses me off.

McCain is right on this issue, and I believe the Supreme court to be wrong when defining money as "free speech". Money, if anything, should be property not speech. Therefore, I agree with both McCain and everyone who voted for McCain-Feingold who agrees that there should be a limit on campaign finance practices - even if it "violates the 1st amendment".

This is just the sort of unfortunate BS spin that the GOP is so famous for.  McCain was obviously addressing the (mostly) right-wing critics of campaign-finance reform, who claim it is an "abridgement of free speech," i.e., "money talks and the rest of us walks."  There are plenty of critiques that could be made of McCain, but trying to spin those comments as if he's an enemy of the First Amendment is more than disingenuous, it's fundamentally dishonest.  Shame on you.

This is just plain sloppy work.

If you didn't get McCain's intention, then you're not very, um... well...

And if you got his gist, then this is plain mean-spirited and cynical politics on your part.

Am I the only person that detects a pattern?