Path Cleared for Campaign Finance

WASHINGTON - Prospects for final congressional passage of campaign finance legislation received a major boost Thursday when Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., indicated he would oppose any filibuster by opponents.

Smith's comments appeared to give supporters of the bill the 60 votes they need to overcome any stalling tactics on the measure that is designed to limit the influence of money in politics.

The bill passed the House last week and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., has said he hopes to win quick passage when the Senate reconvenes next week.

Smith's spokesman, Joe Sheffo, said the senator was "strongly inclined" to vote for a motion to end delaying tactics and bring the bill to a conclusion although he would still oppose the legislation when it comes to a final vote.

Smith's position is that there should be a debate so that "at the end of the day no one is going to be able to say they didn't hear both sides," Sheffo said.

The Senate's leading opponent of campaign finance legislation, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has not said whether he will attempt a filibuster or use other parliamentary tactics to block the bill.

Smith, a first-term senator, is up for re-election this fall and faces a competitive race against Oregon's secretary of state, Bill Bradbury.

The House last week passed far-reaching campaign finance legislation that would end the system in which corporations and unions pour hundreds of millions of dollars in unregulated "soft money" into the national political parties. It would also ban the use of soft money to finance the broadcasting of issue ads, often thinly veiled means to attack or endorse a candidate, in the final 30 days of a primary or 60 days before a general election.

The Senate, led by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis., passed a similar bill by a 59-41 vote last April. Daschle has said it is his hope that the Senate can approve the House bill without change, avoiding the possibility of the legislation getting stalled in a House-Senate conference, and send it directly to the president.

President Bush has not committed himself on the legislation. He joined congressional Republicans in trying to stop its passage but his senior advisers have indicated that he will sign it.

"That's very good news," Daschle's spokeswoman, Ranit Schmelzer, said of Smith's probable opposition to a filibuster. "The magic number is 60, and as long as they don't flip any Republicans, we're there."

Among the 59 senators — 47 Democrats and 12 Republicans — who voted for the bill last April, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, has indicated that he has changed his position and now opposes the legislation. But Smith would join one other senator, Democrat Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, who voted against the bill last year but now says he is ready to stop a filibuster.

If the filibuster is avoided, it would require only 51 votes to pass the bill and send it to the president.

I still think you should look at the political mess in Italy (or pick another example if you like) before knocking the two party system. I for one think were pretty lucky to have survived as a free nation for the last 225 years. We must have done something right to get to this point.

I'm not saying we aren't making mistakes and risking losing that through stupidity or power hunger on the part certain politicians, but I have faith that the answer is not in abandoning the system or the parties in favor of a new experiment. Change the party from within if you don't like it. And if you don't like what someone else is trying to change, oppose it. Quitting the party because you don't get every little nit you want is not a solution. The opponents will eploit your weakness and then you get nothing you want.

I'm not knocking the system, the 2 party system works, if the parties are different, but the fact is that the republican party has moved to the left, and the Dem's believe it or not, I think, have moved to the right.

The parties are really not that much different anymore, they break the rules of the constitution whenever they get the chance. The lesser of 2 evils is not what I would call a great choice. No, I am ready to abandon the republican party and move to the constitutionalist party, because this is getting old. And the fact is, it is probably already too late.

The republicans are just as power hungry as the Demonrats, and have moved to the left in order to be more acceptable. All this talk of paying for prescription drugs, increasing the federal budget etc, etc ad nauseum.

I don't know what to do here, my children will NOT be living under the constitution as it was meant to be, and I haven't EVER lived under that great document the way it was supposed to be. Until we can actually get some people in power that will not pervert that great document for thier own personal gain, we're SOL. The constitution is dead, who cares what party is in power?

when Bush signs this drivel(which will never pass a SCOTUS challenge anyway) and declares the end of "big money" influnce the dumb dems will have lost yet another issue. And they thought Ronnie and Bubba were political. They ain't got nothin on Dubau.

I hope you are being sarcastic. The DEMS have lost? No - We the People have lost once again. One major reason I voted for GW - was because he was against CFR. I expected him to keep his word.

What kind of weasily strategy would this be, for him to leave it up to the Supreme Court to do the dirty work. Didn't HE take an oath to defend the Constitution? And by the way, how many years will it take for the Court to get around to it? What assurance do you have that they will strike it down? What if they don't?

"America is not a two party system, too many people think we are. If we were, then there would have never been a Republican Party, it was a third party at one time."

I don't mean to be a jerk, but you're wrong about the Rebuplican Party ever being a "third" party.

The Whig party had already suffered a nearly complete collapse by the time the Republican party was formed in 1854. The Republican party, which had it's roots in the Abolitionist movement, stepped into a huge power vacumn that allowed it to gain immediate traction. Lincoln was only the second presidential canidate nominated by the party when he was elected in 1860.

The difference today, is that neither the Dems or the Pubs are anywhere near collapse and that is what it would take for another party to come into any sort of significance in a national, political sense. Until one of the two parties is abandonded by the vast majority of its constituencies, this is not going to happen, no matter what the Libertarians or Constitution party may dream about their chances; broad public support for them is simply non-existent. Third parties can only act as spoilers, taking votes from the party that most closely shares their ideals.

The Republican party exploded into power out of an intense national debate (slavery) and a wholesale abandonment of the Whig party, but in reality that event was more than 40 years in the making as the Abolitionists' swayed common public opinion in the North against slavery. It was the sort of sea change in public sentiment and view point doesn't happen overnight, but over time. That's the way change takes place a democratic society. Democratic government flows from the opinions and beliefs of the voters. If you want to change Government, you have to change those beliefs. Conservatives have lost ground because we've lost the ability to convince the general public that what we believe is right.

This is why CFR is so damaging. We've lost the institutions that sway public sentiment, and CFR silences us, but not those liberal institutions. Instead of trying to reconstitute the conservative party, we need to be taking the battle to the court of public opinion... the street corners, the press, the churches and temples. We need to be incouraging our conservative young people to pursue careers in journalism. We need to be buying news papers, television stations and networks; in plain speach, we have to get our message out. If we move the public to the right, so goes the government. If we don't, it won't matter because in the end the American people will get what they want.

Please don't get me wrong. I ascripe to the values and beliefs of the Constitution party and to a lesser extent the Libertarians. This country has strayed far from it's Constititional moorings and we've lost precious freedoms, but we've got to play the game by the rules that exist if we don't want to be irrelevant. The primary rule is that you've got to get the majority people to agree with you in the framework of our two party system. In the entire history of our nation, there has never been more than two political parties sharing power and that is not going to change, for better or worse.

God love you

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