The Louisiana Republican Party has enlisted Jim Bopp to mount a challenge to campaign finance restrictions on state political parties and so it is widely assumed that this is a Trojan Horse lawsuit with much wider significance for the survival of McCain-Feingold. And of course if the three-judge court, then eventually the Supreme Court, decide the case a certain way, it could well help doom the 1970’s reforms–if not immediately, then eventually. Rick Hasen, among others, has embraced the doomsday scenario, and the reform community has communicated to the three-judge court just this view of the stakes.
All of this may be true but this case and likely others to follow point to the costs of the bitter, stalemated discussion of campaign finance policy. Louisiana and its lawyers have a reasonable case against the regulatory burdens on state parties: they stress that the dissatisfaction with aspects of these rules is bipartisan. Thoughtful observers have concluded, as Brookings scholars recently did, that reforms are required.