Obama’s campaign isn’t as grass roots as he’d like us to believe:

That picture differs substantially from the image offered by Obama of a campaign directed by grassroots activists. Their money clearly doesn’t do the talking. Bundlers direct the campaign, quite literally, and those bundlers represent moneyed interests — a much different reality than what Obama and his advocates admit.

As someone who opposes most campaign-finance reform efforts as misguided and harmful to free speech, I don’t find anything particularly objectionable to this structure. It fits within the legal parameters of campaigning, and it mirrors every other major campaign in American national elections. However, Barack Obama has argued for campaign finance reform and for public funding of presidential elections. His rejection of that money doesn’t come from any high-minded sense of civic duty; it’s a threadbare rationalization for succumbing to what he himself campaigns against — the Beltway mentality.

In short, Obama’s principles are up for sale. He may make a better pitch than most, but in the end he’s just a higher-price sellout than most others. That’s not hope or change, but simply hypocrisy on a bigger scale.

I’m sure that this is that new politics that we’ve been hearing so much about.