The Republican Party of New Mexico’s suit filing in federal court last Friday to challenge the state’s Limits Law, a campaign finance law passed in 2009, is poised for a fight. Some who previously supported the law are now joining to dismantle it.

“They’re wanting to go back to the good ol’ days,” said Rep. Jeff Steinborn (D-Las Cruces), sponsor of the 2009 House version of the bill that passed on a 49-17 vote . “They want to go back to being able to funnel as much money as possible through the state’s Republican Party.”

The law restricts individuals or entities from donating more than $2,300 to a non-statewide candidate in an election or $5,000 to a statewide candidate, a political party or political action committee.

The suit was filed with the support of James Bopp Jr., an attorney who claims to specialize in free speech cases out of his Indiana-based law firm Bopp, Coleson and Bostromin Terre Haute, and with the James Madison Center for Free Speech. The plaintiffs have cited Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision in their suit.

Sen. Rod Adair (R—Roswell), the sole dissenting vote in the Senate during the law’s passing, is also one of the plaintiffs in the suit. “As long as there’s transparency in the process, I don’t see the need for the limits law,” he said, adding, “I’m glad there are people on the center-right who are willing to take on these issues. That it’s not just the ACLU or the George Soros empire filing lawsuit after lawsuit.”

It’s those other people on the center-right who have Representative Steinborn worried. “New Mexicans need to decide who’s elected,” he said. “Not the Koch brothers [Charles and David, the billionaire brothers who have vehemently campaigned against President Obama and funded various right-wing groups and causes, as well as the Tea Party] or Karl Rove or these outside interests, like the ones who donated $400,000 to Governor Martinez’s gubernatorial campaign. Before the law went into effect.

“They can throw around a modest amount of money here comparatively and win elections,” added Steinborn. “It’s propping up candidates that we maybe wouldn’t support otherwise. And you have to look at the timing of this too: we’re coming up on a presidential election, and we could be a swing state. It’s exactly what we sought to shut down with our bill, and we really wanted to get the big money out of the races. It’s very bad for New Mexico. Very bad.”

Then, just when the embarrassing reports seemed to be dying down, The Washington Times reported that the RNC failed to disclose more than $7 million in debt to the Federal Election Commission. That prompted the RNC’s own treasurer, Randy Pullen, to accuse Steele and his chief of staff, Michael Leavitt, of trying to conceal the information from him. The RNC denied Pullen’s charges, but the damage had already been done. Many conservative donors already believe the RNC is becoming less and less helpful to candidates and less and less relevant to the party itself. Now, many worry that the committee might actually hurt the party’s chances of accomplishing its biggest goal this campaign season: taking back the House in November.

While numerous conservative organizations have emerged to pick up the fundraising mantle, some election observers point out that these organizations aren’t endowed with the RNC’s unique coordinating mission — circumstances that will make for a less predictable midterm election season and may hurt Republican candidates at the margins.

“When you look back to 2006, we’ve raised more this cycle, indexed for inflation, than the DNC had then,” RNC spokesman Doug Heye argues. “Same scenario if you look at the Republicans in 1994.” As for the unreported debt, the RNC claims the media reports have been wildly exaggerated and, as of mid-July, all debts have been paid in full.

But comparing the RNC’s 2010 finances with any year since 2002, the problems become clear. In May, CNN noted that the RNC’s $12.5 million was less than a third of the amount it had on hand at the same time of either the 2002 ($47 million) or the 2006 ($44.6 million) midterm election cycle. The circumstances have all but ruled out the RNC’s chances of substantially helping out the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is itself getting outfundraised by its Democratic counterpart by a ratio of nearly 2 to 1.

In addition to simply having less cash, concerns have also been raised about the RNC’s ability to perform its traditional coordinating role: creating “victory centers” to support field operations and to synchronize voter identification and outreach programs for House, Senate and gubernatorial races in each state. “It’s always helpful [for the RNC to coordinate]. You don’t duplicate an organizational effort, or a fundraising effort, if you’re on the same page,” observes Republican political consultant Stuart Spencer.

“There are things the national committee does: managing voter lists and managing turnout programs, for instance,” says David Norcross, a member of the Executive Committee of the Republican National Committee. He does not think the committee is so strapped for cash that it will neglect these functions. But he allows that the RNC’s lack of funds might hurt its ability to provide ample support to state and local party organizations across the country. “Am I disappointed? Yes. Up in arms? No,” he says.

Other observers note that Republicans, well aware of the RNC’s problems, are looking elsewhere for funding and organization. “If you’re comparing the most functional part of Democrats and the least functional part of Republicans, you’ll get a misleading judgment,” cautions William Galston, former policy adviser to President Clinton and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Indeed, a group of major past RNC donors, fed up with Steele’s antics, pledged in June to donate their money elsewhere. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling has only made it easier for outside organizations, often referred to as 527s, to spend vast sums of money on behalf of issues and candidates in the upcoming election cycle.

And a number of organizations are ready to receive the funds. One of the most prominent is American Crossroads, the brainchild of former Bush strategist Karl Rove and former RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie. The 527 organization has set a goal of raising $52 million by November to wage an independent campaign to help GOP candidates win office. And Republican-friendly industry groups, like the Chamber of Commerce, health insurers and coal companies, are all contemplating their own aggressive spending strategies.

In some ways, these outside groups can be more effective than the RNC. “Some of these independent groups can take more risks,” observes Meredith Megehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center. “They don’t have to worry about whether the party is healthy in all 50 states. They can take a much more opportunistic approach.”

But they can also be a liability. The Supreme Court’s decision affirmed companies’ and groups’ First Amendment rights to spend freely on independent political broadcasts in the upcoming elections. But they are still legally barred from coordinating their activities with the parties or candidates themselves.

“The party usually won’t do what the candidate won’t want them to do,” notes McGehee, “but it can happen all the time where outside groups come in and spend some money for you or attack your opponent and it’s not what you want them to attack him on or you might think it might backfire. Sometimes the message that they do is counterproductive, and you think  ‘Oh I wish they could talk to me about it.’”

When it comes to 2010, the jury is still out on whether the Republicans’ scattershot spending efforts will prove a liability or not. “Frankly, I think the message is so simple and the wind is so much at our back that [coordination] doesn’t really matter,” argues Norcross. “If we get the message out — too much debt, too much future debt, too much deficit — you don’t have to be a genius to communicate that message.”

“These sorts of things tend to make a difference at the margins,” Galston says. “If this turns out to be a wave election like 1994, then the various committees are just corks bobbing in the sea.”

As The Politico reports:

House Democrats have reached an agreement with the National Rifle Association on campaign-finance legislation that would roll back the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, removing a major obstacle to the bill, according to House sources.

The deal would exempt the NRA and some other large organizations from strict campaign finance disclosures in the bill, which is being pushed by Democratic leaders in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case. The NRA had objected to some of the disclosure requirements for the new campaign finance proposals, and that had kept moderate, pro-gun Democrats from backing the legislation. The NRA said it would not comment until specific legislative language is revealed.

Politico reports the groups that will be exempted from disclosing the ads they back must have more than 1 million members, and members in each of 50 states, raise 15 percent or less of their money from corporations and must have been in existence for more than 10 years.

“The Supreme Court’s decision to encourage the corrosive effects special interest money is having on the election process fundamentally contradicts the American ideal that campaigns should be about the best ideas and not the biggest bank accounts,” Udall said in a statement released Wednesday.

The amendment was introduced by Dodd, who is retiring after this election cycle, but Udall is an original cosponsor.

The constitutional amendment would allow Congress to regulate how money for federal races is raised and spent, including independent expenditures which are at the heart of the Citizens United decision. It would also allow states to regulate such spending at their level.

“I am a firm believer in the sanctity of the First Amendment, and I believe we must continue to do all we can to protect the free speech rights of the American people. But I strongly disagree with the Supreme Court’s conclusion that money is speech, and that corporations should be treated the same as individual Americans when it comes to protected, fundamental speech rights,” said Dodd.

Some commentators have said that the Citzens United ruling could work as an effective wedge issue for Democrats, much like gay marriage bans and abortion laws have served as wedge issues for Republicans.

Earlier this month, Lawrence Lessig announced his call for a Constitutional Convention to overturn the ruling.

Udall and Dodd also announced they would support legislative efforts to “blunt the Supreme Court’s ruling, ncluding increased disclosure requirements on corporate campaign spending and other efforts to further limit the influence of foreign corporations in the democratic process.”

Some states have been weighing ways to rewrite campaign finance laws after the Supreme Court decision, but New Mexico is not currently among them.

Only free individual human beings, or advocates for the rights of individuals, can have authentic credibility. When we don’t think for ourselves, however, we become political dummies for the ventriloquism of ideologues and the propaganda of their secretive rich sponsors.

Organizations of all kinds who assert their right to “free speech,” equating persuasion with money and the mind tricks of the advertising that money can buy, have no credibility.

Who in his right mind believes political advertising? All anyone has to do is consider the source.

The differences between free speech and propaganda will be an unspoken part of a heated debate before the Supreme Court this week when it begins hearing arguments on a case called Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. At issue will be the supposed first amendment rights of corporate and other legal entities to spend all the money they want opposing or supporting political candidates with direct political advertising.

Commercial propaganda techniques put to the service of political view points clutter up the market place of ideas. And yet both the business community and constitutional watchdogs like the ACLU support the basic idea that spending money freely is analogous to speaking freely.

The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, calls campaign finance regulation “thought control.” But that, of course, puts big money not only in the category of speech, but of thought. And that’s incredible and dismissible. Groups don’t think, or speak. They mouth what they are told to, or what they, as a whole, have agreed upon. And there is always a question as to how an agreement was reached and by whom, and who believes in it or merely acquiesces to it.

The Supreme Court could overturn numerous laws evolved over decades that keep corporations and unions from directly funding political ads. At issue is a film called “Hillary: The Movie,” a blatant piece of political propaganda directed against the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton, and produced by Citizens United, a right wing political group. Who funds Citizens United is hard to find out. Is it a front group for some mighty big money, for corporate money, for pro-fascists, for some church? It’s all left up to the imagination. They are a 501-c3, however, and are tax exempt. But if you don’t know where the money is coming from no one should take the propaganda seriously. And propaganda, itself, should never be taken at face value.

In June, when the Supreme Court first heard arguments in the Hillary case, it decided to expand the inquiry and to use the case as a platform from which to explore the whole concept of campaign advertising restrictions, rather than base judgment on the case brought before it. This is flagrant “judicial activism,” a term used normally against liberal justices. But this strange and irregular broadening of the case is a conservative notion, as far as the court is concerned.

Lumping group speak with individual speech as its protected by the First Amendment is intellectually specious.

Only individuals have the ability to think for themselves, to weigh arguments and evidence, and to even change their minds. Only individuals have the capacity for true independence, to go against their own specific interests, let’s say, for the good all. Only individuals can make such sacrifices. Corporations don’t. Labor Unions don’t. Political parties, public and private lobbyists, and experts for hire do not. Their independence must always be questioned. They invariably allow ends to justify means, and often employ any means, short of murder, to make their point. More troubling, while wealthy persons might avail themselves of the expertise of a public relations company to do their thinking for them, most of them do not. And even the wealthy often think and speak impromptu. Group speak is almost invariably PR speak. And that lacks, almost invariably, any credibility whatsoever.

That’s why free speech is the inalienable right of human beings, not “juristic persons,” a concept unknown to the First Amendment of Constitution. Speech and thought are individual human attributes. Legal entities can only “speak” across a spectrum of propaganda. Truth is not in their purview. They have no character, no conscience, no soul. All they have is a lot of money, which buys them the chance at a lot of power.

If the Supreme Court overturns the McCain-Feingold restrictions on unlimited political advertising by corporations, unions, and other group speakers, there would an array of interesting implications, some of which include:

–The unintended consequences of group speakers who go against the those who brought them to the dance. Corporations, in particular, are loyal to no political party. They could turn on Republicans and conservatives as fast as they’ve turned against liberals while covertly supporting Democratic corporate Clintonistas, or as fast as they’ve turned against blather mouth Glen Beck.

–If group speakers are required to identify themselves in their advertising (as in “this piece of biased balderdash is brought to you by Slick Oil), then voters can make their own assessment of credibility. If groups speakers are allow to hide their identity and create infomercials that purport to be the truth, then confusion and misinformation will utterly corrupt elections in America. Many of us already suspect our election system is rigged.

–If restrictions on group speakers funding political ads is lifted then local businesses, local groups, local unions, local associations of all kinds could also fund ad campaigns for or against specific candidates. An advertising campaign is much more potent than a mere endorsement. But endorsements keep voters away from candidates as much as they draw them in. And a vicious ad campaign can backfire.

–If the Supreme Court abandons all campaign finance restrictions without requiring that sponsors take credit for the ads, then the often savage recklessness that anonymity breeds among those who comment on the Internet will descend upon local, as well as national, politics, and infect it with the brutal drivel that people spew when they are not held accountable for what they say.

Only individuals and groups who identify themselves have a chance at being credible. That’s why the murky anonymity of the backers of Citizens United casts a pall on the validity on the Hillary suit itself. Why did the Supreme Court choose this particular case to reexamine campaign advertising restrictions in general? Has the court’s conservative majority been corrupted by invisible corporate forces?