Forgive me, but I couldn’t help but be startled by the above headline of the latest analysis by the Campaign Finance Institute. I mean, the much lauded campaign finance reform effort of a few years ago - the so-called McCain- Feingold bill was supposed to have banned soft money. In fact all the campaign finance reform groups — I don’t think there was a single exception — made a devil’s bargain. In order to get that much praised ban on soft money, the reform groups agreed to double the limits that individuals could give to campaigns. (Someone has yet to explain to me how allowing the less than one-tenth of one percent who give big money to give even more money was a reform.) McCain still carries the mantel of "reformer" because of his championing the legislation

This was a no brainer to predict even then: soft money is back in a big way.

What to do now? See this.

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There's a new study out this morning from the Campaign Finance Research Institute that reminds us — for all the talk of how much small money Sen. Barack Obama has raised on the Internet — of the role of big money in politics. It should be sobering to those who think that small donor money obviates the need for fundamental reform of the campaign finance system.

This study just looked at one path of big money: the broad array of nonprofits active in the 2006 election: 527 political organizations, Section 501(c)(4) social welfare groups, (c)(5) labor unions and (c)(6) trade associations, and "taxable" entities that operate as nonprofits. Check it out.

It should would be nice to get access to the databases the authors used for this study.

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