Yaron Brook has written the single best critique of campaign censorship (for that’s what it is) that I’ve read. Writing for Forbes, Brook argues that laws such as McCain-Feingold “subject political speech to the corrupting influence of government control.”
Brook explains why campaign censorship is harmful; why it shuts out true outsider candidates. But what Brook brings home especially powerfully is the end-game of campaign censorship: campaigns funded — and thus controlled — exclusively by the political powerful:
[C]ampaign finance advocates have not been appeased by McCain-Feingold, and are calling for complete public financing of political elections. Under such a system, candidates would no longer have to financially earn the platform from which they speak; instead, the government would furnish candidates with your tax dollars. Of course, not every potential candidate could receive public funding under such a system: Only “serious” candidates would.
Who decides which candidate is serious? Those presently holding government power. There is no surer way to create a political aristocracy in America.
John McCain betrayed our First Amendment liberties. He should immediately and strongly advocate legislation to repeal his abominable law. I imagine that will happen around the same time that Barack Obama endorses liberty in medicine.