Even good laws have bad consequences. Bad laws with bad logic do even worse. It is obvious that the legislative class would use the BCRA to protect themselves from challengers, both the washed and unwashed. A particularly egregious example is the Millionaires’ Amendment. George Will:

legislators added to McCain-Feingold the Millionaires’ Amendment to punish wealthy, self-financing opponents. The amendment revealed the cynicism behind campaign regulation’s faux idealism about combating corruption. The amendment says: When a self-financing House candidate exceeds the personal spending threshold of $350,000, his opponent gets three benefits.

– First, the opponent can receive contributions triple the per election limit of $2,300 from each donor.
– Second, the donors’ now-tripled contributions are not counted against those donors’ aggregate contribution limits for the two-year election cycle.
– Third, the opponent is permitted to coordinate with his political party committee unlimited party expenditures that otherwise would be limited by statute.

Senate campaigns are subject to similar provisions, which are even more generous to candidates opposed by wealthy, self-financing individuals…incumbents can benefit from the Millionaires’ Amendment even when they have amassed, as most can, substantial war chests. McCain-Feingold’s authors wrote this provision while pretending to reduce the influence of donors, but while actually engaged in incumbent protection.

In a way McCain-Feingold is a microcosm of the shrinking world of personal freedoms that are supposed to be protected by the Bill of Rights. Over and over we have seen this trend, with few examples of expanding freedoms, except in the one area where such license is arguably the most destructive to society.

In 1976 the courts ruled that in political speech and contests the participants most needed “the unfettered opportunity to make their views known.” Time and again the politicians backing the BCRA have cynically used the legislation to do precisely the opposite, just to protect their own precious backsides.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 23rd, 2007 at 3:05 am and is filed under Democrats, General, Law, Republicans, idiots!, radical chic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.