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It is late for any development to influence the Justices' consideration of the challenge to McCain-Feingold that is before them in the case of Wisconsin Right To Life v. FEC, but perhaps someone among the nine will see in Bloomberg's approach the essential inequity of the McCain-Feingold scheme: Political power is deeply connected to money, and McCain-Feingold greatly favors the very very rich while limiting the ability of everyone else to compete. Yes, Romney has considerable personal wealth, but nothing like Bloomberg's, and Romney and the Clintons (and perhaps Giuliani) have some friends and business admirers who can fund 527s, but even if such 527s are set up to help the GOP nominee, that 527 won't be able to coordinate with the Romney or Giuliani team. (The GOP had better hope theses 527s are even now getting organized or its nominee will face a combined Clinton-Bloomberg-Soros blizzard of negative ads without the ability to respond.)
Which is why McCain-Feingold should be declared unconstitutional, and the key case in the area Buckley v. Valeo overruled. Political speech shouldn't be rationed to begin with, but it certainly shouldn't be rationed when self-funding billionaires can spend all they want. Wealth should not confer an advantage this enormous in the political arena.
Here's my earlier column on the subject.
And here's Politico's story on the approach of Bloomberg.
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