The Republican response to campaign finance reform has been less than stellar. This link, which ends up at Byron York’s column in National Review on the subject is worth checking out. The editor’s note says enough

EDITOR’S NOTE: On Capitol Hill today, there is increasing momentum for a move that would crack down on 527 groups, those big, unregulated organizations — like the George Soros-funded America Coming Together — that were allowed to accept unlimited contributions in the 2004 presidential campaign. But this time, unlike the debate over the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance-reform bill, it is Republicans who favor more government regulation of the political system. In the current issue of National Review, Byron York examines a GOP flip-flop on what once was a matter of principle.

Well, yeah - this is a problem. George Soros was a bit annoying and was an awful big gorilla, but his efforts turned out to be politically impotent. There is some sentiment that in future elections we may be less fortunate. At the center of our distress lies a particularly troublesome senator from Arizona

For Republicans, the choice might seem easy; Pence-Wynn is a clear move away from the steadily increasing regulation of political expression. Yet many in the GOP — actually, most in the GOP — are instead leaning in McCain’s direction. And the reason is not any principled belief in campaign-finance reform, but rather the fear that Democrats will use 527s to beat the hell out of Republicans in 2006 and 2008. GOP House aides who follow the situation believe that most House Republicans would vote for limits on 527s. And a key Senate aide says that a very large number — perhaps all — of the Senate’s Republicans would support limits, and do it for nakedly political reasons. “Republican members believe that 527s are a bad thing, gnawing away at the vitals of our majority, and that what McCain supports means their elimination,” the aide says. “No doubt the bad guys will just find another section of the tax code to abuse for anonymous giving and deadly attacks against Republicans, but for now, since Republicans don’t like them, and McCain is scared to death about what they could do against him come primary time in ’08, there’s a marriage of convenience underway.”

Convenience absence principle and substance breeds bad policy. Pence-Wynn is a step in the right direction

But it is in the House that another GOP plan has emerged, one cosponsored by the solid conservative Indiana Republican Mike Pence and the equally solid liberal Maryland Democrat Albert Wynn. Pence and Wynn would impose some new restrictions on 527s, mostly along the lines of requiring them to report contributions quickly and openly. But they would not impose any limits on contributions. And they would go a step farther: In a bid to restore influence to the traditional parties, they would repeal the limits on the total amount of money any donor can give in a two-year political cycle. Current law allows individuals to give $2,100 to a candidate in any given year, or $4,200 per cycle. It also caps individual contributions to a party committee at $26,700 per year. Those restrictions are well known. What is less well known is that the law also limits the total amount of all contributions any one person may give. That limit is indexed for inflation, and right now stands at $101,400 — a combination of $40,000 for federal candidates and $61,400 for party committees.

What Pence and Wynn would do is remove that aggregate limit without touching the individual limits. So, under their plan, if a donor this year wanted to give the maximum $2,100 to all 231 Republican members of the House and all 15 Republicans up for reelection in the Senate, he would be free to do so. If he wanted to give the maximum allowed to each of the party committees, he would be able to do that as well. No individual giving limit would be broken, but the person’s aggregate contribution would be much higher than allowed in the past.

Sounds good to me - anything that weakens McCain-Feingold sounds good to me.