The campaign finance farce

According to the lead story today in The Wall Street Journal, the McCain-Finegold "campaign finance reform act," is being shredded and loopholed to death--by it's own sponsor.

Faced with opponent Barack Obama backing out on his pledge to accept federal financing of his general election campaign, with its attendant limit of about $89 million in spending, McCain is still accepting federal funds, but to overcome the extreme disadvantage, allowing 527s and party groups to raise supplemental millions in his indirect behalf.

As Obama is likely to raise and spend something over $200 million with his internet fundraising juggernaut, Republicans are hard pressed make up the difference between the $89 million federal limit and the Obama spending. The Republican National Committee and the Republican Governor's Association, which have much more generous limits than the $2,300 per individual McCain-Finegold allows, are vastly ahead of their Democratic couterparts in bucks raised so far.

They can't spend it directly in ads for McCain, but can spend it on party building and get-out-the-vote efforts that will nonetheless benefit McCain. This is find with me--I don't think there should be any limits or federal funding of political campaigns either, for that matter, as long as the donors and amounts given are disclosed. It is just the hypocrisy involved.

Liberals on the Supreme Court upheld the body of McCain-Finegold, even though it is a clear violation of the First Amendment by limiting free speech. Now even they are chipping away at it in more recent decisions, but it is largely still intact.

But Obama's audacity of fundraising, is likely to drive the final nails in McCain-Finegold's coffin, by forcing everybody out of the closet.