Oh, come on. He was a major sponsor of the bill, one of the original three, along with McCain and Feingold. He helped shepherd the bill through the Senate.
He was against the restrictions on advertising and he was proud to have raised the amount that ordinary voters can donate to their candidates (hard money). He is also proud to have taken down the direct soft money contributions. This has the effect of curtailing the bribing and buying of politicians. That is a good thing which cannot be validly criticized.
Bulloney. Any infringement of free speech can be validly criticized, and bribery has always been illegal. CFR did nothing new to curtail that, but did limit the speech of free citizens in support of political viewpoints. Here is a particularly strong criticism of McCain-Feingold by JimRob.
Here is a detailed timeline of Thompson's involvement in CFR, by a member of Romney's camp. If he "was against the restrictions on advertising", then why did he include it in the original legislation and file a brief in support of the restrictions in the SCOTUS case four years ago? This is a valid criticism, but instead of addressing it, the Fred supporters on that thread just attacked the messenger.
I will repeat: it is not a valid criticism to say he was an avid supporter of CFR. There was nothing wrong in his support of CFR. He wanted to drive corruption out of politics and CFR was his vehicle to do so. That others added amendments that restricted ads in a certain timeframe before election is something that fell out of his control.