The Soft Money Boomerang

MY Times ^ | December 29, 2004 | MEATHEAD EDITORIAL

[neverdem]

It's encouraging to see signs of life in Washington, particularly on the Republican side of the aisle, over the obvious need to plug the newest subterranean pipe for unregulated campaign funds from big labor, big corporations and just plain big money.

Of all the subplots in the presidential election, none were as sorry as the Democrats' pioneering "527" groups - named for the section of the tax code that governs them. The 527's were intended to circumvent the law's strictures against having unlimited soft money flood into political races. The Democrats built these new shadow-party advocacy groups to attack the president early in the campaign season and build voter-turnout machines. Then they watched Bush partisans adapt the same financing device to float the campaign's most notorious and devastating attack ads, the Swift boat assaults on John Kerry's heroic war record and his antiwar activities after he returned from Vietnam.

Dollar-wise, the Democrats proved better at milking the 527 strategy, spending more than three times as much as the Republicans in stealth-party ads favoring their presidential ticket. But the Republicans wielded their ads like a rapier once the Federal Election Commission, true to its track record, shirked its responsibility by deciding that the new breed of advocacy groups should not be controlled under the campaign finance reform laws.

A commission majority endorsed the fiction that the 527's are independent. The truth is that they were strategically linked to the candidates and perfect targets for aggressive F.E.C. regulation and spending limits. The 527 fund-raisers were the V.I.P. toast of the party conventions last summer, raising money in luxury suites with a wink and a grin.

After this year's election drubbings, you would think the Democrats would now see the folly of the 527 committees. But, no, ranking Democrats are determined to make them a permanent campaign weapon, with no dollar caps on the corporations, labor unions and fat-cat partisans who spent more than $550 million on such committees in this year's races.

President Bush condemned the 527's and promised a crackdown when the Democrats first exploited them and caught the G.O.P. short. But later in the campaign, he failed to condemn the Swift boat ads when Senator John McCain did so and pointedly asked for the president's support. Now Mr. Bush has another chance to put his considerable political weight behind Mr. McCain, who is determined to use the coming Congressional session to pass legislation that would force this blowzy lucre-genie back into the bottle.

Senator McCain overcame whatever past bad feeling there was between himself and the president and became a dogged Bush campaigner this year. We hope the president repays him by explicitly backing the McCain fight to stop the 527 gamesmanship as an abuse of fair elections. And it's equally important for the president to enlist in the senator's campaign to overhaul the election commission. The F.E.C. is a transparent extension of hack party politics, beholden to members of Congress who are more concerned with their own incumbency than the public interest.

[neverdem]

Have a laugh! Happy New Year!

[Cicero]

Let's see. The Democrats got around the new "campaign finance reform" law (which the NY Times supported avidly because it thought it would give them a monopoly on political news at election time) at a rate of three times as much money than the Republican.

But the Republicans were smarter. Their ads were better. Rapier sharp, in fact. THAT'S CHEATING! Republicans aren't supposed to be smarter than Democrats! It's time to pass a new campaign finance law outlawing smart Republicans!

[shubi]

We need to just get rid of all these laws and just disclose who is giving what to whom. Then we would have a free country again.