B’rer McCain and the Briar Patch
I loathe the co-called Campaign Finance Reform Act sponsored jointly by Senators McCain and Feingold after an unethical, if not illegal, largely sub rosa campaign by the tax exempt Pew Foundation. To me the Act is an unconstitutional abomination, but the Democrats, who had clearly pre-arranged their end run on the Act’s strictures by creating countless 527 organizations (many of which were up and running when the Act took effect), no doubt figured that Senator McCain was their perfect patsy to spearhead the passage of this legislation which they could pawn off as a bipartisan clean government move.
We’ve now had time to see it in operation and know the 527s, in fact, can say and do almost whatever they choose in federal elections. They are not to coordinate with candidates’ campaigns in their actions, but no one can look at big operations like MoveOn and say with a straight fact that this hard-to-enforce limitation has worked out well.