Too Little, Too Late

Betsy Newmark writes that “Now that John McCain doesn’t have to be the face of the Republican Party anymore, the Republicans have decided to take on McCain-Feingold restrictions on campaign financing.”

As Victor Davis Hanson (whom I finally got to meet in person this past week) noted shortly before the election’s conclusion:

For all practical purposes, public financing of the presidential general election is now dead. No Republican will ever agree to it again. No Democrat can ever again dare to defend a system destroyed by Obama. All future worries about the dangers of big money and big politics will fall on deaf ears.

Surely, there will come a time when the Democratic Party, whether for ethical or practical reasons, will sorely regret dismantling the very safeguards that for over three decades it had insisted were critical for the survival of the republic.