Billionaires Donate Millions To MoveOn's Bush Bashing Ad Campaign
By Jimmy Moore
Talon News
November 12, 2003

Two liberal Democrat billionaires have offered to donate at least a portion of their wealth in an effort to defeat Republican President George W. Bush in the 2004 election.

Financier George Soros and Progressive Corporation Chairman Peter Lewis told liberal political action committee MoveOn.org that they will donate $5 million to assist them with their campaign to attack Bush in political television ads.

Talon News reported last month about the MoveOn.org Voter Fund which hopes to raise $10 million to run these ads criticizing Bush. Also, they are currently running a national advertising contest called "Bush in 30 Seconds" asking people to create television commercials against the president.

Soros has long been a major supporter of the Democrat Party, giving $20 million recently to the Center for American Progress, a leftist advocacy group. Additionally, he has already pledged $10 million to a liberal group called Americans Coming Together earlier this year.

He said in a Washington Post story that beating Bush in 2004 is "the central focus of my life" and that it is "a matter of life and death" to him to make it happen.

"America, under Bush, is a danger to the world," Soros told the Washington Post. "And I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is."

The ban on "soft" money imposed by the new campaign finance laws has prevented the political parties from raising as much cash as they used to during previous campaigns. However, the laws do not address groups that lean towards a specific political party, such as MoveOn.org, which does not hide its support for the Democrat Party. That means that Soros may give as much of his money to these groups as he desires.

Talon News previously reported that since MoveOn.org is a 527 organization with the Internal Revenue Service, it is permitted to collect an unlimited amount of money to spend on attack ads against Bush.

Republicans find it ironic that the Democrats are looking for loopholes in the campaign finance laws after pushing so hard for them in recent years. With the contributions from Soros, they are now receiving the kind of money that they used to criticize Republicans for accepting.

Soros said he is concerned about Bush and other "neo-conservatives" he describes as "a bunch of extremists guided by a crude form of social Darwinism" who he says have ruined the country since launching the war on terrorism after the attacks on America.

In 1997, Soros penned an essay entitled "The Capitalist Threat" outlining his belief that the government must redistribute wealth in order to promote fair competition for everyone. He expressed hatred for the idea of "survival of the fittest" in society and downplayed individual responsibility for wealth.

Soros' ideas in that essay mirrors what many Democrats believe regarding tax cuts and government handouts.

Soros will be publishing a book entitled "The Bubble of American Supremacy" in January outlining his thoughts on the war on terrorism, homeland security, and military action. He is describing it as "the Soros Doctrine." He says the ideas for the book came to him as he has been awaken like "an alarm clock" in the middle of the night worried about what Bush's foreign policy has done to the United States.

Displaying a disgust for Bush's handling of the war on terrorism, Soros mocks the president's public display of faith in God since September 11.

"Bush feels that on September 11 he was anointed by God," Soros continued in the Washington Post. "Rather than defeating terrorism, he's leading the U.S. and the world toward a vicious circle of escalating violence."

Yet, the disdain that Soros has for Bush peaked on Monday when he told a group of MoveOn.org supporters that the president reminded him of World War II villain Adolf Hitler.

"When I hear Bush say, 'You're either with us or against us,' it reminds me of the Germans," Soros exclaimed.

Soros has previously compared the Bush administration's foreign policy with what the Nazi Party attempted to do in Europe more than a half century ago.

The Federal Election Commission shows that Soros donated $153,000 in cash to the Democratic National Committee from 2000 through 2002. He has given $125,000 to Democrat candidates and political action committees supporting Democrats. The one exception is when he presented Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) with a check for $1,000 for one of his campaigns.

Republican National Committee spokeswoman Christine Iverson told the Washington Post that Soros "has purchased the Democratic Party."

As if the money he has already contributed was not enough, Soros has said he is willing to "give more money." Surprisingly, when asked if he would be willing to spend his entire $7 billion net worth to remove Bush from the White House, he responded by saying that he would do it "if someone guaranteed" it would happen.