At the Faith and Freedom Conference on Friday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that both President Obama’s re-election campaign and the U.S. government are employing “thuggish tactics” in order to “silence critics.”
McConnell spoke about how the Obama administration is trying to amend the First Amendment because they are unhappy with the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
“In my view, the government has long overstepped its bounds when it comes to the ability of individuals and groups to express themselves freely in these moments of national decision we call elections,” he said. “But recent events suggest that the threat to the first amendment is much broader than that. … The right to free speech is the freedom upon which all of our causes depend.”
“The administration’s most prominent effort to limit speech is the so-called DISCLOSE Act — a bill that grew out of the presidents very public and unseemly rebuke of the U.S. Supreme Court in early 2010, you may recall, with the court actually sitting right there in front of him,” McConnell continued.
“This administration claims that the goal of this bill is transparency, but the enthusiasm with which it has embraced the thuggish tactics of the left suggest that its true goal is to silence critics. Not only has the Obama campaign publicized the names of prominent conservatives, leading to intimidation and harassment, they’ve doubled down on these tactics when criticized for doing it. But its not just the campaign — as I said, these tactics extend well beyond the campaign headquarters and deep into the government itself. When President Obama’s top political adviser said that if the president is re-elected in November one of his top priorities could well be to amend the First Amendment. My friends, that would be an act of radicalism. The First Amendment has not been changed for 235 years. They’re so desperate to shut people like us up, that they want to amend the constitution to allow the government to quiet our voices.”
Videography by Sarah Hofmann
