It’s innuendo, but it’s pretty repulsive innuendo (at least unless Dennis Hastert has something to back it up). From Fox News Sunday, Aug. 29, 2004:
[Host Chris] WALLACE: Let me switch subjects. You both had very deep reservations about McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform before it was passed. In fact, I think you say in your book, Mr. Speaker, that you thought it was the worst piece of legislation that had been passed by a Republican Congress since you’ve come to Washington.
Now that everyone seems upset with these so-called independent 527 groups, whether it’s MoveOn.org on the liberal side of the spectrum or Swift Boat Veterans for Truth on the conservative side, do you feel like saying, “I told you so”?
HASTERT: Well, you know, that doesn’t do any good. You know, but look behind us at this convention. I remember when I was a kid watching my first convention in 1992, when both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party laid out their platform, laid out their philosophy, and that’s what they followed.
Here in this campaign, quote, unquote, “reform,” you take party power away from the party, you take the philosophical ideas away from the party, and give them to these independent groups.
You know, I don’t know where George Soros gets his money. I don’t know where — if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from. And I…
WALLACE: Excuse me?
HASTERT: Well, that’s what he’s been for a number years — George Soros has been for legalizing drugs in this country. So, I mean, he’s got a lot of ancillary interests out there.
WALLACE: You think he may be getting money from the drug cartel?
HASTERT: I’m saying I don’t know where groups — could be people who support this type of thing. I’m saying we don’t know. The fact is we don’t know where this money comes from.
Before, transparency — and what we’re talking about in transparency in election reform is you know where the money comes from. You get a $25 check or a $2,500 check or $25,000 check, put it up on the Internet. You know where it comes from, and there it is.
Hastert’s substantive criticisms of campaign finance may be legitimate — but the suggestion that Soros might be getting money from illegal drug distributors, even as a hypothetical example, is pretty reprehensible. (Imagine that, say, Ted Kennedy said “I don’t know where Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are getting their money, if it comes from overseas or from neo-Nazis”; I take it that we’d be pretty appalled, even if Kennedy was just giving a hypothetical example.) And while “drug groups” may be slightly ambiguous in other contexts, where it might refer to pro-drug legalization groups, in this context it pretty clearly does suggest drug criminals, partly because Hastert didn’t deny the connection when Wallace raised it and partly because the pro-legalization groups are funded by Soros, not the other way around.
As Jesse Walker (Hit & Run) points out, illegal drug dealers are actually likely to oppose drug legalization rather than supporting it: “Drug prohibition acts as a price support and a barrier to entry; it helps the cartels maintain their market position. They’re about as likely to fund a legalization campaign as they are to give Denny Hastert an all-expenses-paid vacation in Bermuda or — as long as we’re throwing around groundless insinuations — a free sex tour in Thailand.” But in any event, Hastert shouldn’t be making such unsupported innuendos, whether they make economic sense or not.
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