Their new study of 1.2 million individual and 230,000 political action committee campaign contributions between 1993 and 1996 proves conclusively that the group has no reason for existence, and should immediately end their partisan preaching about the evils of campaign money and go out of business. As the Times' news story on the study reported, CRP research director Larry Makinson found that business contributions to Republicans increased dramatically after they won control of Congress in 1994, from 49 percent of corporate contributions to the GOP before, to 63 percent afterwards. That is, power corrupts money more than money corrupts government.
Liberal reformers have causality exactly backwards.
This is what opponents have been trying to explain to liberal campaign zealots ever since the American Conservative Union and others filled suit against the original campaign finance law way back in 1976. The government extorts business because it has the power and business pays up to protect itself from those who regulate its very existence. The only real finance reform is less government power. Anyone who has been in a room with a senior senator and a big businessman, and who can free himself from ideological blinders, sees which way power flows. CRP, thus, deserves great praise for undermining the entire justification of the Ralph Nader, Common Cause, Public Citizen, Citizen Action, Washington Post, New York Times, et al. campaign reform dogma, even if inadvertently.