Word: feingolds
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...could forgive John McCain for getting a little overexcited about campaign finance reform. It?s the North Star of whatever presidential hopes he still has these days, and here, finally, was his (and Russ Feingold?s) perennially quixotic bill, on the Senate floor for six days of full debate. The spate of pump-priming jeremiads about pork-barrel bills and soft-money corruption that McCain posted on his web site must have seemed utterly appropriate ? but not to Mitch McConnell. "Someone must be corrupt for there to be corruption," McConnell said on Thursday, challenging McCain to come forth with specific...
...McConnell?s promised filibuster, of course, that is the probably insurmountable hurdle that McCain-Feingold faces. The Kentuckian makes no bones about how he feels about a soft-money ban, calling it "one of the tragedies of our time" that such a bill "is allowed to be advanced as reform." McConnell equates unlimited campaign money with free speech, and his solution to the ongoing sale of U.S. politicians is to raise prices, not lower them. With McConnell waiting to pounce with his own version of the Mr. Smith myth, McCain and Feingold need 60 votes to pass their bill...
...because those chances remain at slim to none, and to mangle the old aphorism, Slim?s out back holding a fund-raiser. With McConnell the one in charge of doling out the Senate GOP?s soft money, Republicans aren?t too keen on bucking him. Still, McCain and Feingold have done their part to make the bill as simple as possible, so as to give no one an easy excuse. They?ve shorn the bill of its amendments and put it forth as purely a soft-money ban, up or down ? an approach that has apparently won one convert...
...best policy. The maverick GOPer needs eight more Republican senators to get his campaign-finance reform bill past Mitch McConnell?s filibuster and into legislative heaven. But his plan to win them could have some Democrats turning their backs on the whole deal. McCain and Democratic partner Russ Feingold said Wednesday that they were going to make things real simple for the Senate when their bill comes up for a vote next month: They?ll ask for a soft-money ban, nothing else, and take away wavering GOPers? excuses for holding out - notably by dropping their demand for regulation...
Which is just what happened last year. And once again the bill ? a carbon copy of the 1998 version ? heads off to the Senate, where it has died oh-so-many deaths before. For years running, John McCain and Russ Feingold have seen their own soft-money ban gather a majority of 52 votes in the Senate, still eight short of busting the promised filibuster of the GOP?s head moneyman, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The head?counters say eight votes is still just too much to roust up on an issue that?s near and dear to GOP leaders...