Redstate

By Brad Smith Posted in User Blogs — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

In two earlier posts, I have explained why the GOP's current emphasis on using campaign finance regulation to gain the upper hand in political tussles is doomed to failure.

First, it ignores the fact that Republicans, more than Democrats, need paid media and the support of outside groups to deliver their message and to expose our opponents' fallacies and weaknesses.  Second, it ignores the powerful tilt to the left in Washington's scandal industry, a large group of well-funded "watchdog" organizations that lean well left, and that hold substantial influence with a media more prone to believe allegations about Republicans than about Democrats.  

But the biggest reason that Republicans will not succeed in regulating the Democrats out of business is that we are Republicans.  

(Read on below the Fold)Most of us are Republicans because we believe in some combination of limited government, free markets, individual rights, enumerated powers, and the rule of law.  As such, our hearts will never be into creating big government, or using government regulation as a weapon.  The Democrats will always be better at it than we are.

The cost that we have paid for deviating from our principles is already high.  Is there any doubt that most Republicans would prefer repeal of McCain-Feingold to vigorous enforcement of it?  Or would prefer deregulation to more regulation?  In the winter of 2004, both were possible.  McCain-Feingold had already demonstrably failed.  Bill Blunt, then the #3 Republican in the House, was supporting a promising effort led by Roscoe Bartlett to repeal the worst part of the Act, the limits on broadcast ads that even mention a candidate within 60 days of an election, with broad public support from the ACLU to the NRA.  Saxby Chambliss sponsored identical legislation in the Senate.  Then the Bush political people decided they would rather have aggressive regulation of ads within 60 days of an election - at least if funded by George Soros - and the bill sputtered.  Today, Roy Blunt argues for more regulation, (Scroll down to January 19), not less, and repeal of the hated 60 day limits is nowhere to be seen.  Similarly, last fall a bipartisan majority of the House voted in favor of a bill sponsored by Jeb Hensarling to leave the internet largely free from regulation, but failed to muster the supermajority required by the rules under which the bill was brought forward.  Still, with a solid bi-partisan majority on board, and no less than Harry Reid sponsoring similar legislation in the Senate, internet protection seemed likely.  But the RNC and the White House again ramped up the anti-527 machine, and now the popular internet deregulation bill languishes while 527 regulation - effectively an extension of the 60 day ban - seems more likely.  A wonderful opportunity to repeal the worst elements of McCain-Feingold, and shape a climate for a favorable court ruling in next month's Supreme Court case of Vermont Republican Party v. Sorrell (a court effort by the state GOP to invalidate an oppressive campaign finance bill) has been squandered by the obsession with 527s.

Our natural skepticism for campaign finance regulation fits our legacy, and our agenda, much better than the pro-regulatory approach now being promoted by certain elements of the Grand Old Party's Washington establishment.  As the party of freedom and less government, Republicans thrive when the intellectual climate supports more freedom, personal responsibility, and smaller government.  Campaign finance reform passed Congress, and was upheld by the Supreme Court, because groups hostile to freedom spent hundreds of millions of dollars to create an intellectual climate in which free political participation was viewed as somehow threatening to democracy.  If we hope to ever restore these lost freedoms, we need to press the case that political speech is good and proper - even when remarkably unfair in its allegations, even when funded by George Soros or some other person we may not like.  We should not contribute to this anti-freedom, pro-big government intellectual environment, especially for ephemeral short term political gain.