No one arguing about McCutcheon seems to question  the importance of healthy parties.  They merely disagree about what it means for parties to be healthy.  And from there, critics of the decision and of liberalized party financing move to the claim that legal restrictions on parties will strengthen them, or leave them in in no worse of a position than before. Parties are “defined down,” allowing for the anomalous conclusion that limited access to resources is the best thing for them, even if necessary to prevent their misuse to achieve corrupt purposes.  Making matters worse are unwieldy conceptions embedded in the Buckley constitutional framework that narrowly limit the ways that party activity—and spending—can be pictured.

In a Washington Post piece, Rick Hasen argues that if the aggregate individual contribution limits fall in the McCutcheon case, the results could be both good and bad.  To the good: parties could raise and spend more freely, and therefore would be strengthened when more vigorous parties are needed to temper polarization and alleviate governing gridlock.  To the bad: “more” corruption would result from expanded large donor influence over the political process.  Rick wishes that the two goals, clean but also functional politics, could be achieved in tandem, but with the Supreme Court’s  limitation on Congress’s authority to prevent corruption, he is convinced that we might have to accept more corruption in return for possibly better government.

Are parties now weaker, or holding their own if we just see them in the right way?  The question has engrossed political scientists, but more general interest is growing in direct proportion to the worry that healthy parties could play a constructive role in tempering polarized politics.  Rick Pildes argues for the view that parties are struggling through a period of political fragmentation, defined as a “diffusion of political power” away from the political parties and their leadership, and he see them as in need of help if they are to contribute to the management of polarization.  Seth Masket answers that parties still exert their power effectively, if in a new form, through a complex “network” composed of “candidates, officeholders, activists, major donors, media figures and others.”

Is Bill Maher proposing to cross the line from press commentary into campaign activity, or is he merely innovating, as the press is  scrambling everywhere to do, and preparing for a New Wave Editorial?  As Rick Pildes suggests, this question is mooted by Citizens United, which means that HBO and Maher can count on this decision to provide him much of the space he may need for his editorial project. Prior to Citizens United, HBO would have struggled to defend this program; in the wake of the decision, the path is generally clear, depending on how Maher produces the show.

Edmund Corsi from Ohio has strong views about politics and political candidates, and he makes them known through a website, and in other ways, in the name of the Geauga Constitutional Council. Corsi was called on to answer to the Ohio Elections Commission for failing to register a “political committee” under Ohio state law. Corsi lost there, and then in two appeals, and the Center for Competitive Politics has petitioned for writ of certiorari, challenging the basis upon which Ohio has applied its definition of a “political committee.” Ohio Rev. Code. Ann. § 3517.01(B)(8).