Public Citizen attempts to make the case that the Supreme Court's pending decision in McCutcheon could, if wrongly decided, unleash a flood of money with the probable effect of corrupting the political process. The argument is the one heard before in briefs and in oral argument about joint fundraising committees. A donor who gives to a joint fundraising committee can write a check for millions, to be apportioned within the limits among all the joint fundraising participants. Public Citizen warns against "naïveté": the more “practical” view it urges is that the officeholder who solicits for the joint fundraising committee risks corruptive indebtedness to the donor.

It is disconcerting to discover that Brad Smith is disappointed in an earlier posting here. He holds strong views on political law issues but he expresses them clearly, expertly and with principled consistency: he rightly says that he has maintained an independent position against even the expectations, on some issues, of natural allies in the Republican Party. Now Brad expresses frustration that I misrepresented his tone and argument in an exchange with Paul Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center over the IRS's proposed regulation of 501(c)(4) political activity.

After Brad Smith of the Center for Competitive Politics took to the pages of The Wall Street Journal to criticize the IRS’s proposed rules on tax-exempt political activity, Paul Ryan of the Campaign legal Center answered in a letter to the editor. Smith had complained about an agency "power grab" cheered on by anti-speech zealots on the left. Ryan's villain was the same—the IRS—but in this instance he depicted an agency struggling to its feet after years of “derelict” failure to police special interest misuse of the law.

Consider this program to—

RESHAPE AMERICAN POLITICS

Represent.Us is not just building a movement in support of the [American Anti-Corruption] Act, we’re going to use our collective power to stand against those who stand for corruption. If it becomes law, the Act will completely reshape American politics and policy-making and give people a voice.

This is a bold claim that the sponsors of the American Anti-Corruption Act have made. Perhaps “bold” is the wrong word; “audacious” might be more accurate. The sponsors declare that the adoption of their proposal will “completely” reshape American politics and that it will be “completely transformative” in giving the people a voice in their government.

The Supreme Court has boxed the debate over campaign finance into a corner, forcing the focus entirely on "corruption." Because corruption is the whole game, it is played with vigor, and we have seen in recent years how the term has been pulled this way or that, depending on the commenter’s policy preference.