A GOP reversal on disclosure?

For years, Republicans who opposed efforts to restrict campaign spending had a sure-fire alternative they said would be more effective in fighting corruption: disclosure. 

Now that the Supreme Court has dealt a serious blow to the campaign finance regulations they opposed, Republicans are fighting again, this time against what the White House and its allies argue is the best way to guard against the effects of the decision: more disclosure. 

As the debate heats up over a White House-backed bill intended to blunt the impact of the court’s decision, Democrats and advocates for stricter controls on money in politics have taken to highlighting what they cast as a blatant reversal in the Republican position. 

Critics are firing back. They assert that the bill’s requirements for new forms of disclosure and other provisions unfairly target GOP allies and give a free pass to Democratic ones headed into the critical 2010 midterm elections. 

“It’s unfortunate, but not surprising, that GOP leaders who claimed to be ardent supporters of disclosure and transparency in the past have decided to abandon those principles in order to allow a takeover of our democracy by powerful special interests,” charged Doug Thornell, a spokesman for Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who sponsored the bill. 

Josh Holmes, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a leading opponent of campaign finance restrictions, said the senator from Kentucky “supports full disclosure of donors to candidates and party committees” but asserted that the bill “silences entities that traditionally disagree with Democrats and simultaneously exempts the big unions that spent millions electing Democrats from any restriction. 

“If that sounds like disclosure, then you’ll also probably argue with a straight face that the authors of this bill have no interest in partisan advantage.” 

So far, neither side shows any signs of budging, with the House Rules Committee expected to take up the bill in the days after Congress returns from the Memorial Day recess and full House consideration possible soon afterward. 

The bill, which has two Republican co-sponsors in the House and none in the Senate, would require corporate and union groups airing certain types of election ads to name their top five donors on screen and on their websites, as well as feature their top official on camera in the ads. 

Corporations and unions had been barred from airing ads supporting or opposing candidates in the run-up to elections until the Supreme Court, in a January decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, ruled that such prohibitions violated the First Amendment, a decision Democrats predicted would open the floodgates to vast corporate election spending boosting Republicans.

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