As the television advertising wars of 2004 begin, a full-throttle
confrontation is brewing that could defang the Democrats. The GOP's plan
is simple: block their most vocal critics' big sources of advertising
dollars and then monopolize the microphone.

In early March, the Republican National Committee sent threatening
letters to 250 television stations, urging them not to run MoveOn.org's
ads. On March 9, the Bush campaign joined party operatives in an attempt
to alter the fine print of federal election law to ban big donations to
groups like MoveOn.org and other Democratic activist groups.

When Republicans run scared, they usually justify whatever it takes to
win while accusing their opponents of hypocrisy, even if they've used or
continue to utilize the very tactics they're criticizing. Nowhere is
this more evident than in the effort to clamp down on the Democrats'
so-called 527 committees. The committees are named after a section in
the tax code that quickly became the loophole du jour following the
passage of the 2002 McCain-Feingold law.

When the reform law, most of which was upheld by the Supreme Court,
prevented political parties from raising six-figure "soft money"
dollars, campaign strategists turned to the arcane 527s committees to
raise big money. Money raised through 527s can be used to run political
ads if those ads aren't "coordinated" with the parties.

So Democratic 527s are sprouting up all over the Beltway. Harold Ickes,
the former White House deputy chief of staff for President Clinton, and
Jim Jordan, who until last fall managed Sen. John Kerry's campaign,
created the Media Fund. Ellen Malcolm, who founded the pro-choice
EMILY's List, joined former AFL-CIO political director Steve Rosenthal
to create Americans Coming Together (ACT), which receives substantial
funding from George Soros. According to the March 10 New York Times, the
Media Fund and ACT together have commitments of $70 million, in contrast
to the Bush campaign's $100 million-plus war chest.

That's why the GOP has cried "foul." But Republicans, of course, have
their own 527 committees. In fact, they helped pioneer the use of such
"independent" committees when former House Speaker Newt Gingrich used
GOPAC in 1994 to support dozens of Republican House candidates. During
its heyday, GOPAC reeled in top-dollar donations from Republican
financiers, evaded the Federal Election Commission, and then helped
deliver the first GOP House majority in decades. A more recent example
of this tactic is House Majority Leader Tom Delay's use of a children's
charity to launder donations and conceal donor identities for this
summer's Republican Party convention.

The GOP's tactics to clamp down on 527s are shrewd. At first, a
previously unknown Republican 527 called Americans for a Better Country
asked the FEC to clarify if it could collect the kind of money Democrats
were getting from people like Soros. The FEC took the bait and last
month said it would examine such donations, causing real consternation
in Democratic circles.

Then, on March 9, the Bush campaign filed papers with the FEC, charging
that the big donations to Harold Ickes' Media Group were the same as the
"soft money" donations to political parties that were banned under the
McCain-Feingold law.

In a classic Washington political utterance -- part threat, part
principle -- Bradley Smith, the Republican chairman of the FEC, and
Ellen Weintraub, the Democratic vice-chair, co-wrote a commentary
published in the March 1 edition of Roll Call, a Capitol Hill journal,
sounding this warning: "We fear the [527] debate has been staged by
partisans with short-term time horizons. We suggest that their apparent
preference -- do what you can by whatever means at hand -- is no way to
regulate politics."

This statement of high-minded principle may seem like an oasis in the
realpolitik swamp that is, and has been, federal elections for decades.
And, indeed, Weintraub moderated that view at a Senate Rules Committee
hearing on 527s on March 10, saying, "I will not be rushed to make hasty
decisions, with far-reaching implications, at the behest of those who
see in our hurried action their short-term political gain."

Some campaign finance reformers have suggested that 527s need to be
dealt with. But they argue, as Weintraub has indicated, that it's unfair
to change campaign rules in midstream. That's why, for instance,
McCain-Feingold didn't take effect until after the 2002 election cycle.
The president's supporters, however, say this issue cannot wait.

But in the idealistic eddy that is the professional world of campaign
finance reformer -- and occasionally the FEC -- the rules of the game
can be changed, even in the middle of the most contentious of elections,
if the guiding principle is significant enough. Those seeking new FEC
rules on donations to 527s say such a moment is at hand, arguing big
donations made to influence federal elections have been banned since
1974 and that prohibition has been upheld by the Supreme Court.

In an ironic footnote to the 527 fight, partisan Democrats are fuming
that their Republican rivals have been helped by some of their own,
notably a cadre of politically liberal, long-time reformers led by Fred
Wertheimer, the eminence grise of Washington's campaign finance world.
In fact, the small universe of professional campaign finance reformers
and election lawyers who helped draft the McCain-Feingold bill and
successfully defend it before the Supreme Court is now divided.

Then there are the self-proclaimed political pragmatists who claim that
the emergence of 527 committees underscores the futility of trying to
regulate big money in big elections because both sides will do whatever
it takes to raise as much money as possible.

Either way, the FEC is expected to rule on this 527 funding issue this
spring. Political observers and election lawyers all say the panel has a
"full range of options" before it, suggesting there will be some new
regulations forthcoming.

Conservative pundits, such as editors at The Weekly Standard, are of
course enjoying the spectacle. But there's much more at stake than an
insider spat in campaign reform circles. If the GOP prevails -- which is
likely -- and Democrats cannot raise the money to compete with the
president's ads on television, then the FEC would be intervening in a
presidential race on a magnitude approaching the Supreme Court's
decision in Bush v. Gore.

Stay tuned. Because the political winds are blowing hard.
Steven Rosenfeld is a senior editor for TomPaine.com.