Here’s a familiar passage from Ken Vogel’s latest piece in Politico, which focuses on incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s efforts to reform campaign finance rules [emphasis mine]:
McConnell’s efforts are by no means guaranteed to succeed. In fact, they represent an early test of whether the Kentucky senator will be able to translate his increased power within Congress into a robust national political operation like the one presided over by the man he’s replacing as majority leader, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid.
"He’s trying to create Mitch McConnell, Inc.," said David Donnelly, executive director of a group called Every Voice, which — ironically — spends big money in politics to reduce the role of big money in politics. It spent $400,000 in the midterms attacking McConnell as beholden to wealthy donors.
Yes, "ironically." It’s a formulation liberal outside spending groups opposed to outside spending use often, as Vogel has documented in his reporting on rich left-wing donors:
The liberal strain of the argument is usually sprinkled with a heaping helping of moral superiority. Their most generous backers are giving to candidates and causes that could hurt their bottom line by raising taxes on the denizens of their elite tax bracket, the argument goes, whereas conservative big donors are seeking to pad their pockets by trying to slash taxes and regulations that impinge on their business.
"The people who are giving money into politics here are interested in changing the system. They’re not interested in getting return on investment," said former Stride Ride president Arnold Hiatt, who donated $1.9 million to Democratic super PACs in 2012, not including gifts to nonprofits that aren’t required to disclose their donors. "You can focus on the irony, but it’s not hypocrisy because we’re not trying to get something for our donations."
Here it is again in this National Journal report on "tech titans" who donated huge sums during the midterms:
And again in this New Yorker feature on Lessig’s billionaire-funded effort to get money out of politics, titled: "Embrace the Irony," which Lessig has adopted as a personal motto.
Here’s Jonathan Soros, son of left-wing billionaire George Soros and founder of a Super PAC whose goal is to eliminate Super PACs, describing his efforts:
"We’re trying to affect elections from the outside in order to create a different system so that the type of spending we are doing would be less influential," [Soros] said in an interview. "We get it. It’s ironic. There’s simply no other way to do it."
As the Free Beacon has highlighted, the idea that liberals donors ask for nothing in return for their millions is absurd. Ironically is, ironically, the wrong choice of words. It is the opposite of irony; this behavior is to be expected. "Hypocritical" would be a fine substitute.
It's been almost 20 years since that word has been abused so badly.