Tornado Alley (PROG)

[tinner]

http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/104133/full-disclosure-praise-fred-hiatt

Not so long ago, conservatives arguing against campaign finance contribution limits offered a deal that was, Hiatt notes, rather seductive: let everyone give whatever they want, but put it all out on the table. No confusing rules, no fine print: you can spend what you want, but we’ll disclose every bit of it. If money is speech, as the Supreme Court believes, then it only makes sense that we should know who the speakers are.

Well, that was then. This is now:

The Republicans, apparently, never meant it. Now that they have Unlimited Donations, or something pretty close, they don’t want Unlimited Disclosure after all. They want unlimited contributions, in secret.
“Republicans are in favor of disclosure,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in 2000 on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” making clear he was including issue advocacy — campaign ads with a thin veil of policy — as well as candidate spending. “Why would a little disclosure be better than a lot of disclosure?”
“I think what we ought to do is we ought to have full disclosure, full disclosure of all of the money that we raise and how it is spent,” Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), now House speaker, said on the same show in 2007 . “And I think that sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
“I don’t like it when a large source of money is out there funding ads and is unaccountable,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said in 2010. “To the extent we can, I tend to favor disclosure.”
Yet now, with more secret money than ever slopping into the system, not a single Republican has signed on to bills that would provide the disinfectant Mr. Boehner claimed to favor.