Hypocrite Watch Part 2: John Edwards and the News Corp. Money

John Edwards closely trails behind Rudy Giuliani on my list of my hypocritical politicians contending for their party’s nomination. Perhaps the best thing which could be said is that about Edwards is that he did a much smoother job of changing most of his previous views in preparation for a 2008 run than Giuliani did. Edwards succeeded where Giuliani has not largely due to adopting the views of a large segment of the liberal blogosphere. Unfortunately this also suggests that the liberal bloggers who accept Edwards’ new set of beliefs without question are less astute than those on the religious right who, despite all their faults, are smart enough to distrust Rudy Giuliani’s conversion to their point of view.

While Edwards has so far escaped much scrutiny on the changes in his political views, the hypocrisy underlying his attacks on other candidates continues to backfire against him. His initial attempts to attack other Democrats on their positons on Iraq were shot down by Barack Obama who reminded Edwards as to exactly which of the supported and which of them opposed the war before opposing the war became the politically popular position. Since then he has attacked Democrats for attacking other Democracts, and for accepting money from News Corp. The last backfired when it was found that Edwards received $800,000 in a book deal from News Corp.

Edwards claimed that the money was contributed to charity, but never provided the evidence or answered whether he took a tax write off for the donation. The Politico now reports that Edwards’ daughter and a senior political aide also received a portion of the money from News Corp.:

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards recently defended taking a lucrative book contract from a publisher controlled by Rupert Murdoch — whose News Corp. empire Edwards has sharply criticized — by insisting that “every dime” of his $500,000 advance went to charity.

Left unmentioned by Edwards, however, was that Murdoch’s HarperCollins paid portions of a $300,000 expense budget for the book to Edwards’s daughter and to a senior political aide, Jonathan Prince.

There very well is nothing wrong in  Edwards’ transactions with News Corp. The problem is the manner in which he claims to be more pure than all the other candidates.

2 Comments

  1. 1
    John says:

    Utter nonsense. You must be seeing something I’m not.

    John Edwards received money for work he did, a book. You can’t compare these monies to political donations. They are simply not the same.

  2. 2
    Ron Chusid says:

    You miss the point. They don’t have to be the same.

    If News Corp. is so evil that the other candidates should not accept a dime of political contributions from them, why is Edwards even doing business with them? They may not be the same, but the manner in which Edwards determines what is acceptable for himself, and what is deserving of attack by the other candidates is quite hypocritical. It also doesn’t help matters that Edwards wasn’t totally honest in his response that all the money was contributed to charity.

    Making distinctions such as this between the forms of money received by News Corp. is a perfect example of hypocrisy.

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