Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
If I were Howard Dean, after declining matching funds I would do the following to make folks understand how serious I am about the need to uproot Bush:
- I'd promise to limit my primary spending to the same levels as the other candidates
- Then I'd pledge the excess would be given to the Democratic candidate for the Presidency if I didn't win it myself
Heh.
I think it's really unfortunate, the way that money and fundraising ability has come to dominate the election process. Bush is great at raising money, but that doesn't make him a good president. Yet it seems that we are judging how good the candidates are by how well they raise money.
Of course, I say this as a supporter of a candidate who has not raised a huge amount of money and whom I feel is not being given as much of a hearing as he deserves because of this, so you can note my potential bias.
I've been too busy to look into it since the story came out, but I know from some Libertarian campaigning material that there may be another effect that he was really going for: if you don't accept matching funds, your duty to disclose your campaign books is much lower and you drop a lot of the spending caps.
Those are EXACTLY the reasons for dropping the matching funds. Which concerns me much less when your donors are regular humans recruited from the net.
I think Bush is far, far more concerned with the first reason than the second.