Interest Groups Gain In Election Cash Quest

Wall Street Journal ^ | 19 December 2007 | BRODY MULLINS

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Political groups unaffiliated with the two major parties account for an increasingly large share of spending on federal campaigns -- 19% of the total in 2006, up from just 7% in 2000, according to an analysis of campaign-finance data by The Wall Street Journal. They now are horning in on crucial campaign activities once dominated by the parties, such as buying ads and getting out the vote.

...Over the past four years, the national Democratic and Republican parties have raised and spent less on elections than during the prior four years, when adjusted for inflation. At the same time, independent political groups have more than doubled their spending, and have begun to rival the parties as an election-season financial force, the Journal's data analysis shows.

The shift, largely the result of campaign-finance laws intended to curtail big-money donations to parties, could further polarize the American political landscape.Republican and Democratic parties aim to appeal to broad swaths of the electorate, they tend to be moderating forces in politics. That isn't true of the independent groups, which range from the Sierra Club and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to fringe groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which disbanded after the 2004 election. They often pursue narrower agendas or causes further out on the political spectrum.

The nonprofit groups are financed by wealthy individuals, corporations, labor unions and other interest groups. Unlike the national parties, they face no limits on how much money they can take in from contributors. They often don't have to disclose their donors' names until months after an election -- if at all.

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All attempts by Congress to create a utopian election system fails to take into account human nature. In trying to develop laws that make fairness and forbearance unnecessary they run straight into the true nature of the political animal--win, win at any and all costs.

The way to temper this tendency to win at any cost is not to write laws but to "write up" malefactors by making their actions transparent. Easily done, if laws are simple and transparency is immediate. Another part of human nature detests unfairness and a significant part of the public will solve what no law cannot do by identifying, isolating and scorning the malefactors of unjustified political clout.