NEW YORK – Among GOP presidential hopefuls, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is leading the charge to defend Internet free speech against the threats he sees on the horizon by the FCC's decision last week to impose Title II regulation and "net neutrality" rules on the Internet, which has been pushed via the deep pockets of billionaire activist George Soros and the activism of avowed Marxist Robert McChesney.

"Washington wants power over the Internet, the people want freedom online," Cruz told a cheering and enthusiastic audience at CPAC last week. "And don't believe President Obama when he says, 'If you like your Internet, you can keep your Internet."

Cruz is among conservative of the White House's pressuring of the FCC to accept "net neutrality" rules that have been pushed for more than a decade by leftist deep pockets such as George Soros and his Open Society Institution, as well as by Marxists such as Robert W. McChesney, the founder of the leftist Free Press lobby.

McChesney, a University of Illinois communications professor, previously served as editor of the Marxist journal, "Monthly Review."

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In 2009, McChesney said that “any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself ... to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles.”

When Cruz tweeted, "'Net Neutrality' is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government," the left-leaning DailyKos.com called his comments "nonsensical," suggesting even conservatives were outraged by them.

Cruz told Town Hall last week: "You should feel real excited, because at Barack Obama's instructions, five unelected bureaucrats have now declared the Internet is a public utility."

Cruz said the FCC's "new rules for the Internet are 332 pages that you and I are not allowed to read."

He then echoed then-House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi's infamous remark regarding Obamacare.

"I think their strategy is that you have to pass it to find out what's in it," Cruz said.

With a GOP majority in Congress and a Democratic president in the White House, it is unlikely any GOP-sponsored legislation in the next two years regarding the Internet will get the supermajority in the Senate it would need to override an Obama veto.

What Cruz appears to understand, however, is that unlike Obamacare, which was a law passed by Congress, the FCC vote can be reversed by a newly appointed, Republican-controlled FCC in 2017, should the GOP recapture the White House next year.

Government control

In Washington, there is serious concern on the political right that "net neutrality" represents an attempt by the radical left to seize control over Internet content while Obama is still in office.

The move comes after the left's failure to revive the "fairness doctrine" for radio and television to curb the impact of conservative talk radio. The fairness doctrine, which was abandoned during the Reagan administration, made a political talk format for a radio station unviable, because it required "equal time" for every opinion.

Similarly, "net neutrality" is based on the concept that "all data should be transmitted equally over the Internet," noted conservative pundit John Fund, writes in National Review.

Fund reported the financial support for the campaign pushing "net neutrality" – at least $196 million – came from billionaire activist George Soros and liberal foundations.

The final push, Fund said, was political pressure exerted by the Obama White House on FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who heads an ostensibly independent regulatory body.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is investigating the White House pressure, demanding to see all documents and communications between the White House and the FCC or other executive-branch agencies on the issue, along with all relevant documents regarding internal communications on net neutrality within the FCC.

Chaffetz's concern harkens back to Obama's call on Nov. 10, 2014, for the FCC to reclassify regulation of the Internet under Title II of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Obama sought to impose "the strongest possible rules" to enforce net neutrality, with the White House presenting the populist-sounding argument this regulatory reclassification would protect ordinary consumers against powerful Internet service providers.

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The Media Research Center documented that Soros' Open Society Foundation between 2000 and 2013 spent $82,784,698 funding liberal groups supporting net neutrality, while the Ford Foundation similarly spent $113,620,800, for a combined total of $196,405,498.

"The biggest money in this debate is from the liberal foundations that lavish millions on self-styled grassroots groups pushing for more and more regulation and federal control [of the Internet]," American Commitment President Phil Kerpen told MRC Business in the preparation of the exposé.

In his National Review article, Fund targeted McChesney as the most influential of the left-wing activists joining Obama in the effort to impose government control over the Internet to achieve their political objectives.

McChesney's goals have always been clear, Fund wrote.

"At the moment, the battle over net neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies," McChesney he told the website Socialist Project in 2009.

"But the ultimate goal is to rid the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control."

Earlier in 2000, he told the Marxist magazine Monthly Review: "Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism."

McChesney also caught the attention of Aaron Klein, who reported for WND over the weekend that McChesney's Free Press has advocated the development of a "world class" government-run media system in the United States. It would give the FCC the authority to investigate conservative talk radio for "hate speech" crimes that result from a disproportionate number of radio and cable-news networks being owned by non-minorities.

On Jan. 14, 2014, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck down the second of four attempts the Obama administration has made to push net neutrality through the FCC since 2010. Most legal observers expect the FCC rule changes this time around will be tied up for the next few years in new litigation brought to block the Obama-demanded changes.

The current rules appear to be an Obama administration adjustment geared to fit within the Circuit Court's 2014 ruling that seems to suggest the FCC has the authority to regulate the Internet under Title II as part of the FCC's authority to generally regulate broadband pursuant to Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Yet, few experienced FCC observers expect the debate to end there.

A 2010 letter by a group of broadband providers, including Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner Cable and Qwest, to then FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, an Obama friend from Harvard Law School, spells out the argument that will be made in court against the FCC decision. The providers argue the deal made by the Clinton administration in fashioning the 1996 Telecommunications Act to have the FCC regulate the Internet as a Title I information service provider, not a Title II broadband provider, has produced and will continue to produce "huge benefits for American consumers."