What baffles me about Fred’s answer on Laura’s show is that he had a much better one in March, when he talked to the Wall Street Journal:

Conceding that McCain-Feingold hasn’t worked as intended, and is being riddled with new loopholes, he throws his hands open in exasperation. “I’m not prepared to go there yet, but I wonder if we shouldn’t just take off the limits and have full disclosure with harsh penalties for not reporting everything on the Internet immediately.”

This was perfectly acceptable: the implication is that he had been caught up in “reform fever,” and supported a bad bill that didn’t do what he’d hoped, so now he’s open even to repealing it. Why is he changing his tune now, defending the old bill that conservatives hate?

As a cub reporter at Human Events, I was sent to the Capitol to grill members on the campaign finance bill when it was making its way through Congress in 2002. None of them — pro or con – thought of the 30- and 60-day limits as something “added on” or “new” or something they had been unaware of . And I’m talking about members who were not co-sponsors or anything like that.

When a federal court struck down portions of the bill in the spring of 2003 (this was before the McConnell case reached the Supreme Court), I went again to ask members if they stood by their vote. The answers were mixed, but at least some people were willing to admit candidly that they’d made a mistake.

One was a bit too candid, and I can’t help including his answer because it still makes me laugh:

Rep. William Lacy Clay (D.-Mo.): “No, I wouldn’t stand by [my vote]. Under duress, I voted for it, only because my party brought it to us in that manner. And you can probably recall all of the acrimony around it, with the party leadership wanting the Democrats to solidly be behind it. And it turned out to be a disaster. And it was an assault on 1st Amendment rights…It’s more of a matter of a vote-getting strategy for the Democrats at the time. I took the vote, voted in favor of it, and lost my lunch afterwards. I just didn’t feel good about it, but this is how the system is supposed to work: the courts will clear up those issues.”